Please do not send me private messages unless you have found an error in this post or have a suggestion for an update. Do not ask me to a) rank your armory, b) read your WWS parse, c) validate some weird ass theory you have, or d) provide you "maths" to prove something. I have neither time, nor interest, in pretty much anything you're going to PM me about.

If you are reading this for the first time, please read the entire first post and use the search tool before posting questions. Almost every question that's been asked has been answered. Nobody here has any interest in perusing your armory and two dozen WWS parses just to tell you the same information that is posted below.

An Enhancement Shaman is an integral part of any melee group. Besides offering substantial personal DPS, an Enhancement Shaman brings group specific buffs through talents beyond those offered by a Resto Shaman. These include Unleashed Rage (an on-crit proc for 10% additional melee AP), Strength of Earth (+97 STR) Windfury (20% proc instant attack with extra AP), and Grace of Air (+88 AGI). Enhancement shamans are equally useful in a main tank group, offering increased dodge and armor, or increased threat generation.

An Enhancement Shaman is not a melee healer. While many will have a resto sub-spec and can certainly help top off a group after an AoE or step in to prevent an emergency, their gear's focus on melee stats makes them unsuitable healers in the endgame. An Enhancement Shaman should be dedicated to DPS, maximizing Unleashed Rage and totem coverage for his group.

Enhacement Shaman have four sources of damage:

• Windfury, a weapon imbue that gives the shaman a 20% proc of two instant attacks with a substantial AP bonus
• Stormstrike, a 10s cooldown instant attack with both weapons
• Elemental Shocks, shared cooldown instant elemental damage offering stealth prevention, snaring or interruption
• Fire Totems, pulsed direct or AoE fire damage

The vast majority (75-80%) of a shaman's damage comes from autoattack and Windfury. Shamans also have three on-crit procs: the aforementioned UR, Flurry (3 attacks at +30% speed) and a special clearcasting state for shocks.

Enhancement shaman are highly gear dependent, perhaps more so than any other DPS class. The 'skill' required to be effective at the class manifests in proper gear selection prior to combat; during combat the amount of 'skill' to produce respectable DPS consists mainly of staying in contact with the mob and maintaining totem coverage. This gives an Enhancement Shaman a great deal of latitude while DPSing since there are a limited number of actions that we can perform while waiting on Stormstrike and Shock cooldowns, allowing many possible global cooldowns to be used for purging mobs or removing poison/disease debuffs with no interruption of the DPS cycle.

Things we know about patch 2.4
(Or, Don't post this stuff again because we've already seen it)

• Totem UI allows individual totems to be destroyed, and is accessible through the API for macros/mods.
• Sunwell badge loot [Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality] and [Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality] are just under ~10 DPS of the S3 weapons.
• [Mounting Vengeance], drops off Sunwell trash, is the 2.4 Best in Slot OH weapon.
• Ghost wolf will be insta-cast if you max the T2 talent (alternate place to spend the 2 pts in Anticipation)
• The T6 belt/boots/bracers have had all stamina removed and replaced with Expertise. We will be able to cap expertise using these 3 items and the Shard of Contempt.
• [Shard of Contempt] from heroic Magister's Terrace will be as good, or better than, the DST.
• Shamanistic Rage in the latest build is no longer a magic effect and isn't dispellable
• Stamina added back to the T6 belt/boots/bracers, they still have expertise

Contents
1 Major Abilities
1.1 Windfury Weapon
1.1.1 Weapon Speed Interaction
1.1.2 Windfury Proc Rate
1.1.3 Can Windfury Totem avoid the cooldown problem?
1.2 Flametongue and Frostband Viability?
1.3 Stormstrike
1.4 Elemental Shocks
2 Talent Builds
2.2 The Myth of Elemental Devastation
3 Itemizing an Enhancement Shaman
3.1 Enhancement Points (EP) Stat Weight System
3.1.1 Using EP - Examples
3.1.2 Hit Rating
3.1.3 Haste Rating
3.1.4 Intellect and Mp5
3.1.5 Expertise Rating
3.2 Weapons
3.2.1 Main Hand
3.2.2 Off Hand
3.2.3 TwoHand Viability
3.3 Relics
3.4 Gems and Meta Gems
3.5 Trinkets
3.6 Enchanting your Gear
3.6.1 Weapon Enchants
3.6.2 Agility vs Run Speed for Boots
3.6.3 Enchants for the rest of your gear
3.7 Consumables
4 Enhancement Shaman in a group
4.1 How to choose totems
4.1.1 Totem Twisting
4.2 Managing your threat
5 Notes for Raid Leaders
5.1 Group compositions that work
5.2 Evaluating with WoW Web Stats
6 Simulations
7 Useful Links and Addons
8 Changelog


1. Major Abilities
1.1 Windfury Weapon
Windfury Weapon was corrected in the 2.1 patch link Windfury on the main and off hands. At some point prior to that, a hidden/internal 3 second cooldown had been added to Windfury Weapon. As a result, OH procs now (correctly) trigger the cooldown on the MH. Despite this set back to shaman DPS (net loss of about 10-15% DPS for enhancement shaman), Windfury Weapon is still the best weapon imbue to use – former CM Tseric has stated that the devs have no plans to scale the other weapon buffs to match Windfury. [footnote]http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=102731970&pageNo=1&sid=1#0[/footnote]

1.1.1 Weapon Speed Interaction
Weapon Speeds play an important role in maximizing DPS from Windfury procs. The goal is to chain WF procs every 3 seconds, as soon as each cooldown ends. Both the OH and the MH need to be as slow as possible to achieve this(they do not need to be matched in speed, just as slow as you can get it). The idea is to reduce the number of swings made during the time that windfury is on cooldown. Since the cooldown is 3 seconds, weapons speeds are preferred to be close to that speed, generally this means 2.6 - 2.8 under current itemization. The idea is that a faster weapon would proc a WF, and then strike again within the cooldown window, which means that windfury would exit cooldown and your weapon would still be on some significant portion of its swing timer, unable to proc another WF.

Many shaman will correctly use a slow MH weapon but use a fast OH such as a dagger, generally because its easier to find fast OHs than slow ones. This combination however means that your OH is much more likely to be the first one to hit outside of a WF cooldown and will "steal" the potential chance to proc, placing your main hand on lockdown. In order to maximize the potential for MH procs the OH needs to be as slow as possible.

The image below courtesy of Yo! illustrates this principle. You can see that as the MH and OH approach 2.6 speed (arbitrarily chosen as the cut off point for the scale) that the number of WF procs lost to the OH become lower, at around a 45% predicted loss rate. A fast OH with a slow MH combination has a higher rate of loss to the OH, at nearly 55%.


1.1.2 Windfury Proc Rate
When you are wielding a two handed weapon, or are using a shield, your chance to proc windfury on any landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is 20%. When you dual wield weapons, the chance on each landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is approximatedly 36%, if and only if both weapons are imbued with Windfury. (Original findings were posted on the WoW forums by Disquette, the thread has been removed from the official archives)

Analysis of the combat log shows that if you sum all hits, the proc rate while DWing is 20%, but that includes hits you make while inside the 3 second cooldown, which cannot actually proc WF. When you remove the ineligible hits the observed proc rate from the eligible hits becomes 36%.

1.1.3 Can Windfury Totem avoid the cooldown problem?
While you may ~think~ it will help you avoid the WF cooldown problem, the totem isn't providing anywhere near the benefit you'll get from the weapon imbue.
WF Totem has the following issues: no elemental weapons bonus (40% multiple), only one extra attack (200% multiple), lesser AP bonus (scalar). Each MH WF Totem hit would be 100% extra damage or so compared to a normal attack, and has only one chance of proc'ing flurry, any weapon procs, and UR. Each MH WF imbue hit would be 280% extra damage or so compare to a normal attack, and has 2 chances of proc'ing those things.
In a very very simplified way of looking at it, you'd have to proc MH WF 2.8 as many times using the totem as you do using the imbue, for it to be worth it.

1.2 Flametongue and Frostband Viability?
Content placehoder

1.3 Stormstrike
Content placeholder

1.4 Elemental Shocks
There are 2 possible rotations that an Enhancement shaman can use. Initially most shaman will assume that with the Stormstrike nature damage bonus Earth Shock spam will yield more DPS. However, Earth Shock is a binary spell and is susceptible to full resists, whereas Flame Shock has no binary component and will benefit from partial resist rates due to spell hit. Additionally, Flame Shock benefits from Curse of Elements and the Improved Scorch Debuff, while Earth Shock is only amplified by Stormstrike. (Both benefit from Misery)

In determining the ideal rotation, let us assume a sandbox environment with no crits and no resists to worry about. The mob will be fully raid debuffed with CoE and Malediction, Misery, and Improved Scorch Debuff. Assume that Earth Shock always has the benefit of Stormstrike, and that the Enhance Shaman in question has 2500 Attack Power, yielding 750 spell damage (approximate) with the Mental Quickness talent. Earth Shock has a spell damage coefficient of 0.42 and Flame Shock has a coefficient of 0.67.

Earth Shock Spam
This is a 6 second cycle.


Flame - Earth Rotation
This is a 12 second cycle that begins with Flame Shock.


While a single earth shock in 6 seconds is worth more than a single flame shock that is allowed to go its full 12 second DoT, the combination of the two in a single, 12 second rotation, provides superior DPS.

Finally as a third point of comparison, let us compare Earth Shock to Flame Shock directly, using only 6 seconds of the DoT component of Flame Shock. Earth Shock was computed above as providing 207.9 DPS every 6 seconds.

Therefore, you can see that Flame Shock over a 6 second period provides more DPS than Earth Shock.

2 Talent Builds
Content placeholder

2.1 Elemental or Resto sub-spec
Content placeholder

2.2 The Myth of Elemental Devastation
One of the more prevalent suggestions is that Enhance Shaman should optimize their DPS by speccing into Elemental for a 5 second shock cooldown, 5% increased shock damage, and of course the Elemental Devastation Talent, typically achieved by removing points from Mental Quickness and/or Improved Weapon Totems for an 18/43/0 build.

The logic of this build is fundamentally flawed. A properly geared Enhancement Shaman will have at most a 6% spell crit rate from Intellect. Under perfect conditions this will amount to a 1% crit gain from Elemental Devastation. Under not-so-perfect conditions, this talent would be negligible and worthless to an Enhancement shaman.
The probability of getting 2 crit shocks in a row at 6% spell crit, in order to sustain the extra melee crit bonus of Elemental Devastation, is 1-(1- 0.6)^2 = 0.118. That's about 12% uptime of an extra 1% crit from 3 talent points.

3. Itemizing an Enhancement Shaman
3.1 Enhancement Points (EP) Stat Weight System
Extensive modeling, simulation, and empirical testing by Disquette, Pater, Tornhoof, and Yo! have led to the development of a system for determining the items which produce the highest DPS in a raid environment. The Enhancement Points (EP) system assigns weights or scores to each stat point. These EP weights can then be used by hand or in automated programs such as Enhancer, Pawn, LootRank and Thottbot to score items. Today, the best tool for determining these weights is to use the Crazy Shaman's DPS & EP Calculator produced by forums member Yo! For those who cannot run the simulator, are unwilling to do the legwork, or just want to check their own numbers, the following sets of EP values are provided:

Entry Raid (T4) EP Values
If you have just hit level 70 or have been running some heroics for a while but have not started raiding KZ and 25 mans yet, your EP stat weights will be significantly different from shamans wearing high-end gear. Use these values until you have progressed into SSC/TK beyond the first 1-2 bosses. These values were arrived at using simulation of a shaman wearing best of slot quest and instance blues, with some heroic loot. Buffs were limited to what a 10 man raid would normally have - no Kings, no LotP, no flasks, and assumed lower quality gems and enchants.

Attack Power = 1 EP
Strength = 2 EP
Agility = 1.74 EP
Crit Rating = 1.97 EP
Hit Rating = 1.34 EP (explanation below at VIII.4 Itemization - Hit Rating)
Haste Rating = 1.28 EP (explanation below at VIII.3 Itemization - Haste Rating)
Armor Penetration = 0.22 EP
Expertise Rating = see the Expertise section below for an explanation

Middle Raid (T5) EP Values
These values are a generally agreed-upon set produced by the average of the most reliable closed-form model and iterative simulations across the breadth of shaman gearing possibilities. They rapidly become less accurate as you accumulate more pieces of T5-level gear. As such, using Yo's simulator to obtain individualized EP numbers is strongly advised. Note that Blessing of Kings increases the contribution of Strength and Agility by 10% and thus their EPs when it is active.

Attack Power = 1 EP
Strength = 2 EP (2.2 EP with Blessing of Kings)
Agility = 1.8 EP (2 EP with Blessing of Kings)
Crit Rating = 2 EP
Hit Rating = 1.4 EP (explanation below at VIII.4 Itemization - Hit Rating)
Haste Rating = 1.48 EP (explanation below at VIII.3 Itemization - Haste Rating)
Armor Penetration = 0.28 EP
Expertise Rating = see the Expertise section below for an explanation

High Raid (T6) EP Values
These values were contributed by forum member Sebudai based on an end-game T6 gear set, essentially with best-in-slot items for all slots. These should be viewed as a rough estimate for shaman entering T6 content, and include Blessing of Kings.
Strength = 2.2 EP
Agility = 1.69 EP
Crit Rating = 1.74 EP
Hit Rating = 1.69
Haste Rating = 1.82
Armor Penetration = 0.35 EP
Expertise Rating = 3.18 (Yo's Simulator recently changed to give EP weights to Expertise Rating)

Weapon DPS EP Values
Pitbuller and Rob have shown that it is possible to convert weapon DPS into EP values. This is useful to compute the total EP of a weapon in order to compare two weapons, as seen in this post (link to where you or someone compared Netherbane to MG Cleaver). The following values are only valid for a 2.6 speed weapon. EP would need to be recalculated for any other speeds. These are presented here because 2.6 is the most common speed for weapons.

1 MH DPS = 9.03 EP
1 OH DPS = 3.70 EP

Careful! Only use these numbers for comparing weapons; do not use them for drawing other conclusions. For example, these numbers do not mean that 9 AP = 1 DPS for enhancement shamans. Why? Note the distinction between EP and AP. 9 AP will in fact increase your DPS by more than 1; just as 1 weapon DPS will increase your overall DPS by more than 1. To understand why, imagine that 1 weapon DPS increases your DPS by exactly 1 after glances, misses, dodges, and crits are accounted for. Now throw in Flurry, WF procs, and Stormstrike and realize that the weapon is hitting more often than the tooltip says it is, so you gain more DPS from the nominal weapon DPS.
3.1.1 Using EP - Examples
First, you must make a decision whether or not to assume that you will have Blessing of Kings. As a general rule, Salvation and Might are superior buffs, so you can only expect Kings in a 25-man scenario. In this example, we’re comparing 25-man gear, so we’ll assume Blessing of Kings is active and use the T5 EP Values. Then, it’s a simple matter of looking at the stats available on each item, multiplying them by their attack power equivalence, and adding them all up:

[Valestalker Girdle]
+27 Agility (x 2 = 54)
+25 Stamina
+18 Intellect
Equip: Improves haste rating by 36 (x 1.4 = 50.4)
Equip: Increases attack power by 76 (x 1 = 76)
Total: 180.4 EP

[Girdle of the Tidal Call]
+35 Strength (x 2.2 = 77)
+30 Stamina
+20 Intellect
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 33 (x 2 = 66)
Total: 143 EP

So, Valestalker Girdle (180.4 EP) is a larger increase to melee DPS than Girdle of Tidal Call (143 EP); for our purposes, we’ll say that makes it a better item. Note that values are not assigned here to Stamina or Intellect; these stats do carry some value for raiding enhancement shamans, but any assignment of value to them would be arbitrary and is for each individual shaman to decide on her own.

Now lets compare two weapons using the weapon EP values.
[Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver]
97.5 DPS (MH: x9.03 = 880.4) (OH: x3.70 = 360.75)
+27 Stamina
Equip: Improves hit rating by 10. (x1.4 = 14)
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 19. (x2 = 38)
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 12.
Equip: Increases attack power by 30. (x1 = 30)
Total MH EP = 962.4
Total OH EP = 442.75

[Netherbane]
96.5 DPS (MH: x9.03 = 871.4) (OH: x3.7 = 357)
+25 Agility (x2 = 50)
+21 Stamina
Equip: Increases attack power by 40. (x1 = 40)
Total MH EP = 961.4
Total OH EP = 447.05

Comparing the two weapons we can see that the difference in the MH for each weapon is relatively minor with a 1 EP difference, but in the OH the Netherbane performs better with a 5 EP difference.

3.1.2 Hit Rating
Hit Rating is a subject of much anxiety among Enhancement Shaman. Hit Rating is valuable, but beyond hit capping your special attacks it provides less benefit per point to our damage than an equivalent item budget amount of AP, Crit, Haste, or Expertise.

Since we can get a large quantity of +Hit from talents (9%), our special attacks (windfury and stormstrike) are already hit capped. All the extra +Hit rating on your gear is going toward improving white damage only, which typically comprises between 40%-50% of your total damage. When you consider the itemization costs of hit rating compared to crit rating and AP, which directly impact 90% of a shaman's total damage, you can see why hit rating is given lower precedence. Take the talents to hit cap your specials, any hit rating on gear after that is icing on the cake.

A common misconception is that you "have to hit before you can crit." This is a fallacy and illustrates a misunderstanding of the attack table. (Note that this is in reference to white damage which uses a single roll system.) Your Hit Rating will not impact your Crit Rate in any way.

A second misconception is that a miss is a "missed opportunity for a WF proc" and that more Hit Rating will generate more WF procs. This misconception is generated from the flawed assumption that all swings are possible WF procs. However only swings that are outside of the WF cooldown are eligible to proc WF. A good portion of your autoattack hits will never be capable of producing WF procs. A 5 minute fight with no flurry would see 115 white swings with a 2.6 speed weapon. A Shaman might look at that and think that 0.36 * 115 = 41 possible WF procs, but that is incorrect since each successful proc locks out 1-2 hits that follow, shrinking the pool of actual eligible hits. It is actually quite difficult to calculate the number of attacks that you *should* have producing WF in a given amount of time, and that is why we rely on simulators to generate the EP value of Hit Rating.

There is no magic value of +Hit that an Enhance Shaman needs We need as much of every stat as we can get, but hit rating is just less important than the others. That does not mean that the goal is to have low hit rating either though. Rogues and Warriors require large amounts of +Hit to be effective because of their rage and combo point systems, and because they do not have talents that can hit cap their specials before considering hit on gear. Enhance shaman have no such feedback system and are able to hit cap specials through talents - therefore, hit rating above and beyond your talents is great to have, but is not a necessity.

3.1.3 Haste Rating
Haste Rating will directly increase the contribution of white swings to your DPS - 1% Haste will generate 1% more auto attack DPS. Prior to patch 2.2 Haste Rating became the superior stat, but the 2.3 patch reduced its EP value closer to that of Hit Rating.

Modeling at one time indicated weapons hasted between 1.51 and 1.41 speed will actually experience a sharp decrease in potential Windfury DPS. The range of 1.51- 1.41 speed was believed to cause the main hand to always finish a swing just before the end of a WF cooldown, making you wait longer for the next eligible swing that can proc WF. If hasted in this period for a long duration, you could expect WF DPS contribution to decrease. However, you'll also experience many more white swings during that time, and so the loss of potential WF procs should be offset by the increased white DPS. It is no longer believed that the 1.5 to 1.4 hasted speed will actually cause any decrease in DPS - you should notice an overall increase.

There is no need to worry about the 1.51 - 1.41 hasted weapon range. The original claims about the supposed DPS loss had done no empirical or simulated testing to back up their modeling. More recent testing has indicated that whatever potential WF DPS is lost because of swing timer issues is more than made up for by the gigantic leap in autoattack DPS.

3.1.4 Intellect and Mp5
Intellect on gear is not a significant source of DPS contribution. Pater has a short writeup exploring this here.
Mp5 is almost universally agreed to be a hunter stat that is wasted on enhance shaman gear. Note that the more you decide to contribute in a "hybrid" manner (healing to top off yourself and others) the mana pool will become slightly more important, but not such that you should sacrifice significant DPS upgrades to hold on to 15 Int on another item. The combination of Judgment of Wisdom and Shamanistic Rage (use it early, use it often) should prevent you from running out of mana even in full rogue leather gear - unless you're having to spot heal.

3.1.5 Expertise Rating
Patch 2.3 will change all weapon skill rating into weapon expertise rating, which converts into Expertise skill at a rate of 3.95 expertise rating:1 Expertise, and reduces the chance for your target to dodge and parry by 0.25% per point of Expertise. [Shoulderpads of the Stranger], which used to provide 10 dagger skill rating, will now provide 10 expertise rating (all weapons).

The parry reduction element of Expertise will have only marginal use in raid settings: mobs cannot parry attacks made from behind. Many bosses randomly turn to cast attacks and can parry while turning, but this possibility is too random to value significantly. Unlike parry, mobs can dodge attacks from behind and Expertise is currently the only way to reduce the number of dodges. The dodge reduction element of Expertise will vary from encounter to encounter: it will be useless against bosses that are constantly casting (e.g. Shade of Aran, High Astromancer Solarian, Reliquary of Souls) because mobs cannot dodge while casting, but useful against mobs that do not cast or only cast instant spells. Expertise has been shown to affect yellow damage as well as white damage, so under the second circumstance it is actually more useful than hit rating for enhancement shamans.

We still don't know how Expertise's dodge and parry reduction affect the one-roll white attack table. For now, the community is assuming that it converts dodges and parries into hits that do not have a chance to crit. On the other hand, we are now confident that Expertise will allow yellow attacks to crit, since they are resolved through a two-roll system. Thus, we will estimate expertise rating to be similar to the weight of hit rating, with some exceptions.

First, expertise rating is only useful in chunks, because there is no concept of having 2.5 Expertise - the Skill values are all rounded down to whole integers. To get around this, you first need to sum up the expertise rating across all your items, divide by 3.95, take the floor, and multiply by 3.95 again. This gives you a "white hit rating" equivalency. Note that this makes expertise rating EP discontinuous. One expertise rating may be worth 0 EP because it is not enough to give you an extra skill point -- e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 15 expertise rating -- while a jump of two expertise rating at the same point may have a surprisingly high EP -- e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 16 and thus 0.75% dodge reduction to 1.00% dodge reduction.

Next, we must account for the fact that Expertise, unlike hit rating, also effects the yellow damage from special attacks in addition to the white damage from auto-attacks. To correct for this, you need to multiply by the ratio of melee damage to white damage, or (Yellow % of damage + White % of damage)/(White % of damage). Also, because white crit rate as a percentage of landed swings decreases as hit rate goes up, but with the two-roll system, yellow crit rate stays constant, we must adjust for that. Finally, we must multiply by the EP of 1 hit rating, to convert our "hit rating" equivalency into EP.

Our final expertise calculation is:
EP =

Example Calculation:
Assume that we are examining a new piece of gear that will bring our total Expertise Rating to 17, Hit EP is 1.4, Crit% is 30%, White% of DPS is 50%, Yellow% of DPS is 40% and the remaining 10% is shocks and searing totem.

Expertise EP =
Expertise EP = 45.12
Note that this value is not the EP stat weight of Expertise Rating, it is the total sum worth of the Expertise Rating on all your gear.
3.2 Weapons
Optimizing enhancement shaman DPS requires running two slow weapons with Windfury Weapon on both weapons.

The best way to choose between multiple items in the same slot is to run Yo's simulator, once for each item, using the stats that you would have with that item equipped. Do not post asking which weapon is best: find out for yourself by running the sim. That said, here are some general guidelines.

A frequently asked question is how to wield weapons with differing speeds but similar DPS values, such as using a Rising Tide and a Syphon - is it better to put one weapon in the main/off hand over the other? Simulation results indicate that it makes little difference which hand the slower weapon is wielded in. It appears that in general, a 2.x/2.y = 2.y/2.x.

3.2.1 Main Hand
Arena Season 3 weapons (e.g. [Vengeful Gladiator's Cleaver]) are the best currently available.

Any combo of [Rising Tide] and [Syphon of the Nathrezim] or a pair of Syphons is the second-best option for those unable to attain an 1850 arena rating.

Arena Season 2 weapons (e.g. [Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver]), [Dragonstrike], [Wicked Edge of the Planes], [Netherbane], and [Talon of the Phoenix] round out the list of third-best choices.

Orcs should prioritize axes for the +5 Expertise racial bonus. This is believed to be applied per hand non stacking, so an axe/mace combo only applies expertise to the axe, and an axe/axe combo would apply 5 Expertise to each hand.

The differences in DPS within these "tiers" are relatively minor. Which weapon is best for you, or which weapon to mainhand and which weapon to offhand, can only be found by using the simulator with your stats, and no general conclusions can be drawn.

3.2.2Off Hand
OH itemization is fairly poor early on, but recent changes in patch 2.3 have added several new options in KZ and ZA that will help fill the gaps. If you are not yet raiding, the best choices for OH in a WF/WF setup is a 2.6 speed Gladiator weapon from Arenas, a crafted Runic Hammer (2.4 speed) or a blue one-hand weapon available in several heroic instances (Auchenai Crypts last boss drops a 2.6 speed one-hand axe). Failing that, get yourself a green 2.6 speed off the Auction House.

An epic dagger with high dps (such as [Malchazeen] or [Guile of Khoraazi])and imbued with Flametongue can be used to temporarily replace a green or blue OH weapon. This comes at the cost of reduced Windfury procs, reduced Stormstrike damage, and a reduction in Flurry uptime. This should be seen as a stopgap measure only, not a weapon that you should commit to using for long periods of time.

Current best choice for an offhand is any of the Season 3 Arena weapons ([Vengeful Gladiator's Cleaver]).
A [Rising Tide] or [Syphon of the Nathrezim] comprise the 2nd best options available.
Rounding out the list are [Netherbane] or [Fury] as your third choice options.

3.2.3 TwoHand Viability
2H weapons are strictly inferior for PvE DPS situations, and reasonably poor for PvP as well. Talents and mechanics of shaman DPS at lvl 70 are built around DW. 9% +Hit while DWing through a 0/42/19 build allows all special attacks to be hit capped through talents alone, while a 2H will only receive 3% of the hit benefit. DW also scales better with AP. 2h effectively gains (1.0 * 0.95 hit rate) = 0.95 from AP and DW gains (1.5 * 0.74 hit rate) = 1.11 from AP. The more +hit you have (until we reach cap) the greater the difference between the two is. At a certain point (easily reached when raid buffed), this difference in gain from AP will outweigh the bonus base DPS of a 2H weapon over similar ilevel 1H weapons.

The second largest benefit you bring to your group is Unleashed Rage, and your Flurry and UR uptime will take a large hit from using a 2H, as strings of dodge/miss/non crits become compounded by a single, slower swing time. Threat concerns are even more problematic with a 2H because of large WF procs, requiring that you heavily pad your threat against a tank.

And finally, as mentioned in the Windfury Proc section, DW with WF on both weapons results in an increased chance to proc WF off either hand (36%). 2H weapons will not benefit from that increased proc rate.

To illustrate:

Note the differences here. 2H has a higher flurry uptime because DWing will consume the 3 charges faster, but the Uptime for UR is much higher for DW than 2H, leading to greater group synergy.

Derivation of the Unleashed Rage uptime:
UR Uptime =

HitsPer10sec =

Windfury =

Flurry Uptime =

3.3 Relics
The two best choices are [Totem of the Astral Winds] and [Stonebreaker's Totem]

A: Astral Winds EP = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Astral_Winds * Elemental_Weapons
B: Stonebreaker EP = Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3)
B1: Stonebreaker EP to WF = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Stonebreaker * Elemental_Weapons
B2: Stonebreaker EP to SS = Percent_of_SS_Swings * Stonebreaker
B3: Stonebreaker EP to white damage = Percent_of_white_Swings * Stonebreaker * (1 - MissRate)

Physical Damage breakdown:
Assuming two 2.6 speed weapons, flurried to 2.0 speed, means you get around 10 white swings per SS cooldown. 40% of those swings will be WF, meaning 10 white swings, 2 SS swings, 4.8 WF swings. 10+2+4.8 = 16.8
Percent_of_WF_Swings = 4.8/16.8 = 0.286
Percent_of_SS_Swings = 2/16.8 = 0.119
Percent_of_white_Swings = 10/16.8 = 0.595
(This breakdown is conservatively in favor of the Astral Winds Totem. Many WWS parses from raids show the balance slightly shifted away from WF towards white swings)

A: 32
B1: 44
B2: 13
B3: 65 * (1 - Missrate)

A = Stonebreaker_Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3).
32 = Uptime * (44 + 13 + [ 65 * (1 - Missrate) ]
Let Missrate = 19%
Then Uptime = 29%

As miss rate decreases, so does the required uptime to break even. An enhancement shaman with +9% hit from talents and no hit rating on gear would see a 19% miss rate against boss mobs, resulting in a required uptime of 29%.
Changing some values for more hit gear, we find that even if your miss rate is better than 2% the required uptime is 26.4%. This gives us a fairly good window of possible required uptimes for the Stonebreaker buff over a wide variety of gear, with a good conservative estimate being 30%.

Now what does it take to achieve a 30% uptime? Here’s a simplified formula for determining this.

(Seconds per Shock) = (Stonebreaker proc chance) * (1-Spell miss rate) * (Stonebreaker duration) * (1/Stonebreaker Uptime)

(Seconds per Shock) = (0.50)*(1-0.14)*(1/0.30) = 14.3

This means that on average, a shock every 14.3 seconds is the minimum needed to maintain 30% uptime on the totem buff and thus make it come out ahead of the Astral Winds totem.

Conclusion: The Stonebreaker totem should be superior to the Totem of Astral Winds on average if the shaman can shock at least once every 14 seconds. Note that Stonebreaker has a 10 second hidden cooldown.

3.4 Gems and Meta Gems
In general, [Bold Living Ruby] should fill every socket unless there is a socket bonus that does not require using a Blue gem color, and where the socket bonus is worth more EP than what the loss of the dps stats on the blue gem would be.

If you are matching gems for socket bonuses, use the following:
Red socket: [Bold Living Ruby].
Yellow socket:[Inscribed Noble Topaz].
Blue socket: [Sovereign Nightseye].

The [Rigid Dawnstone] is always the wrong answer for enhance shaman.
The [Bold Living Ruby] will always be better then [Bright Living Ruby] in a raid environment due to Blessing of Kings.

Naturally the epic BT/Hyjal versions of these gems follow the same logic and you should be able to extrapolate which gems to use.

[Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], Best choice for a meta gem. This gem will scale with your crit rating. The 3% crit damage can be roughly approximated to raise your DPS by 0.03 * Crit Rate. At 30% crit rate this amounts to nearly a 1% gain in damage dealt.

[Thundering Skyfire Diamond] gives 240 haste rating for 6 seconds. This is your second choice for meta gems as it appears to have a 1 minute cooldown. Shaman with lower crit rates (20% or lower, geared in heroic/blue gear, just starting 25mans and KZ) will benefit slightly more from this gem over the RED.

[Swift Skyfire Diamond] will yield a very minor DPS increase - same for [Potent Unstable Diamond]

3.5 Trinkets
Trinket gains are converted using the EP formulas above in the itemization stat weights from above, and listed as greatest EP at the top.

• [Dragonspine Trophy] 160.25 EP = ( 40 + ( 325 * HasteRating * 10 * 1.5 / 60 ))
  Assuming a 1.5 PPM
• [Berserker's Call] New drop from Zul'Aman. 150 EP = 90 + ( 360 * 20 / 120)
• [Madness of the Betrayer] 142 EP = ( 84 + ( 20 * HitRating ) + ( 2.4 * 10 / 60 * 300 * ArmorPenetration ))
  Using 2.4 PPM (see here) the uptime is 40% giving a passive -120 Armor
• [Tsunami Talisman] 141 EP = (( 10 * HitRating ) + ( 38 * CritRating ) + ( 340 * 10 * 0.9 / 60 ))
  Assuming a 0.9 PPM
• [Ashtongue Talisman of Vision] 137.5 EP = ( 275 * 10 * 0.5 / 10 )
  Corrected in patch 2.3 to have the listed 50% proc rate, and observed at this rate on the PTR.
• [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] 120 EP
  At a full stack, since this will take 10-15 sec to achieve, the EP might be considered less valuable.
• [Bloodlust Brooch] 118.3 EP = ( 72 + ( 278 * 20 / 120 ))
• [Hourglass of the Unraveller] 109 EP = (( 32 * CritRating ) + ( 300 * 10 * 0.9 / 60 ))
  Assuming a 0.9 PPM
• [Abacus of Violent Odds] 96 EP = ( 64 + ( 260 * HasteRating * 10 / 120 ))
• [Drake Fang Talisman] 84 EP = ( 56 + ( 20 * HitRating ))
• [Kiss of the Spider] 79 EP = (( 14 * CritRating ) + ( 10 * HitRating ) + ( 200 * HasteRating * 15 / 120 ))
• [Romulo's Poison Vial] 49 EP = ( 35 * HitRating )
  And some unknown value from the nature damage proc, which is usually 1-2% of your damage. Unless you're totally starved for +Hit this probably isn't a trinket for shaman. Especially as you become better geared the proc will become less and less of your total damage done since it cannot scale with your gear. This trinket was most certainly designed with warriors and rogues in mind, not shaman.
• [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] The value of this card is low once your buffed crit rate is 30% or higher.

3.6 Enchanting your Gear
3.6.1 Weapon Enchants
[Enchant Weapon - Mongoose] 4.8% crit per proc (double procs stack) and 2% haste.
[Enchant Weapon - Crusader] provides 60 Strength (120 AP) at lvl 70 per proc.
[Enchant Weapon - Potency] is a constant +20 Strength (40 AP).

Clearly Mongoose is the preferred enchant, although Crusader can be a cheaper, but still effective alternative. Potency should be completely avoided.

[Enchant Weapon - Executioner] is roughly equivalent at high T5/T6 levels of gearing to a single enchant of Mongoose. However, Mongoose/Executioner or double Executioner will not outperform the dps benefit of double Mongoose unless the Enhancement Shaman is geared with nearly unobtainable values of Armor Penetration.

Executioner currently does not stack from multiple hands, each proc when DWing will simply refresh the buff. It is unknown if this is intended, since this deviates from how other weapon enchants function. Obviously the value of Executioner will increase as you gain more -Armor gear. At entry raid level a shaman will probably gain more from dual Mongoose enchants. At high T5 content and beyond, Executioner will become more valuable.

Evidence suggests that Mongoose and Executioner have nearly the same uptime and PPM, around 40-45%

3.6.2 Agility vs Run Speed for Boots
For PvE, either [Formula: Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed] or [Formula: Enchant Boots - Cat's Swiftness] are going to be big payoffs. Increased run speed is hands down the best enchant you can get for PvE. Derivation:
So for a 5 minute fight if you spend roughly 4 seconds moving between adds, running to the boss, etc, Run Speed provides a superior DPS benefit.

3.6.3 Enchants for the rest of your gear
Asked often enough that it ends up needing its own section. These are the enchants contributing the most to DPS. Stength is always preferred over AP due to the effects of BoK.

Helm - Glyph of Ferocity (34 AP, 16 Hit)
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Blade (15 Crit, 20 AP) or Greater Inscription of Vengeance (30 AP, 10 Crit)
Cloak - Greater Agility (+12 Agi) or Subtlety (-2% Threat) if you feel threat constrained
Chest - Exceptional Stats (+6 Str/Agi)
Bracers - Brawn (+12 Strength)
Gloves - Major Strength (+15 Strength)
Rings - (Enchanter Only) Stats (+4 Str/Agi)
Legs - Nethercobra Leg Armor (50 AP, 12 Crit)

3.7 Consumables
Translating the benefit of consumables using EP values we can assess DPS consumables in order of greatest benefit:

• [Flask of Relentless Assault] 120 EP
• [Elixir of Major Agility] 110 EP
• [Fel Strength Elixir] 90 EP
• [Elixir of Major Strength] 70 EP

Potions on 2 minute timers:

• [Haste Potion] [(1.48 * 400) * 15]/120 = 74 EP
• [Insane Strength Potion] (120*2*15)/120 = 30 EP

4 Enhancement Shaman in a group
4.1 How to choose totems
In a 5-man party your DPS is generally limited by the threat that your tank can produce. The most efficient way to increase small party DPS is to provide the tank with more threat. Totems should be chosen that compliment the tank, rather than the rest of the party, even it if means only 1 player is receiving benefit from the totem. Priority of totems always goes to the tank in small groups.

Warrior and Paladin tanks should always receive Windfury, unless they are severely under-geared and need the extra armor/dodge just to survive. Rationale for using GoA for a Warrior or Paladin tank should never be to provide crit. Feral druids that are tanking should always be given GoA.

In a raid setting this becomes slightly more complicated as bastardized groups are thrown together. Recommendation is to follow this set of rules:

Rule 1 - If you are ever in doubt about which Air totem should be used, your raid leader has probably failed to put together a complimentary group. Reference the Group Compositions That Work section for details on putting groups together. Encourage proper group compositions for maximum benefit to the raid.

Rule 2 - If a DPS warrior is in your group, he needs Windfury for his rage feedback mechanism. Windfury provides a larger DPS gain to a DPS warrior than any other totem to any other class.

Rule 3 - If you are in the Main Tank group, the warriors should be given Windfury unless it is a non-threat limited fight where survivability is more important. Prot Paladin tanks will benefit more from Wrath of Air and Feral Druids that are tanking should obviously receive Grace of Air.

Rule 4 - If there is no Warrior, but 2 or more Combat Sword Rogues are in the group, they will benefit slightly more from Windfury from increased opportunities for Sword Spec procs, than from Grace of Air.

Rule 5 - If your group has no warrior, and 2 or more Feral Druids or Hunters, Grace of Air is the totem of choice.

4.1.1 Totem Twisting
Sometimes the best way to solve a conflict of interest in a group is to give everyone what they want. Note that Blizzard has stated that Totem Twisting is considered a bug, and plan to remove the ability to do this in a future patch.

Windfury Totem places a 9 second buff on party member's weapons to imbue them with the extra attack mechanic. This can be manipulated to allow Grace of Air or Tranquil Air totems to be placed "simultaneously" with Windfury Totem.

You'll most likely want a macro to do this if you so choose, and a mod to track the time remaining on the windfury buff. A common one looks like this:
Totem Twisting has both its advocates and its detractors, it is not an agreed upon mechanic or strategy.
Pros:

• Party gains 88 Agility or extra threat reduction
• Overall DPS of the party is increased

Cons:

• The shaman increases time spent in global cooldown, impairing his ability to decurse or purge mobs.
• The mana cost of refreshing 2 totems every 9 seconds while Stormstriking is roughly 14,000 mana every 2 minutes. This will limit the ability to use shocks, and requires very careful timing of Shamanistic Rage, may require JoW from a paladin, and definitely requires 5 points in Totemic Mastery.
• Until you are very practiced with the technique you will find your attention devoted to watching the timers which means you will be less attentive to changes in the game environment
• Latency or simply being late to refresh the Windfury totem will cause the Windfury buff to run off your party's weapons, which means they are losing opportunities for a Windfury proc.

4.2 Managing your threat
Enhance Shaman are severely threat capped - not as badly as a Ret Paladin, but worse than a DPS warrior. With no active threat reduction we rely on buffs, items, and strategy to reduce our threat. Methods to reduce your threat are listed below in order of Most to Least effective. Remember that threat reduction is multiplicative, not additive.

• Spirit Weapons - Enhancement talent that reduces melee threat by 30%. This is a staple talent for our spec. If you don't have this, you're walking the crazy line. Most effective since its always on and isn't reliant on a paladin.
• Blessing of Salvation - 30% threat reduction. If you only have one paladin in your raid, this is the buff you need. If you don't have a paladin in your horde raid, you need to pressure your leadership to recruit one.
• [Prism of Inner Calm] - until Blizzard changes this the item is worth around 10% threat reduction as long as your raid buffed crit rate is over 30% (and by the time you're killing Vashj it damn well better be). Keep an eye on this as Blizzard may buff it at some point.
• Strategy - A lot of this depends on your tank and his TPS generation. If your tank can generate around 800 TPS you can give him a 10k threat lead and then unload without much worry of catching up. If you find yourself approaching the threat cap you should stop shocking first since they aren't affected by Spirit Weapons. A suggestion was made of "downranking" your weapons for a few seconds, allowing you to continue to provide Unleashed Rage to the group with lowbie weapons so that your threat isn't increasing.
• Battle Ankh - the improved ankh talent can certainly come in handy when clearing raid zones. You need to be extremely careful about pulling aggro however - if you pull and die, the mob will pick the next highest threat target to attack, which may not be the tank. A much safer method is to allow yourself to die to AoE, and have buffers primed to give you DPS buffs when you ankh. At that point you'll be free to take Blessing of Might if you didn't have it before, since your tank will now have a hefty threat lead.

5 Notes for Raid Leaders
[u][b][size=+1]5.1 Group compositions that work[u][b][size=+1]
While building groups for Enhancement Shaman its important to remember that while we are a support class, we also require support from other group members to enhance our own DPS. Battle Shout is one of the most important buffs that Enhancement Shaman require, followed by Blessing of Salvation/Might.

There are three possible group configurations that can make use of an Enhancement Shaman, listed below in order of the magnitude of buff they would bring to your raid as a whole.

Melee Group
Enhancement Shaman (Windfury Totem)
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue/Feral Druid/BM Hunter/MM Hunter/Ret paladin
Fury or MS Warrior

The Melee Group is the top priority to receive an Enhancement Shaman, it is where we provide the most utility.

Tank Hybrid Group
Enhancement Shaman (Windfury Totem)
Prot Warrior
Prot Warrior
Prot Paladin or Feral Druid
Tree Druid

This group brings an increased threat window for the rest of the raid, allowing the DPS classes to attack earlier and at full force, and should be the second priority for an Enhancement Shaman if you're able to bring 2 to a raid. If the Warrior or Paladin is the Main Tank, Windfury should be used. If the Feral is the Main Tank for an encounter, Grace of Air should be used.

Hunter/Feral Hybrid Group
Enhancement Shaman (Grace of Air Totem)
Hunter
Hunter
Hunter
Feral Druid

This should be an extremely rare situation since very few guilds would ever have room in a roster for a third Enhancement Shaman, or it could be used for an encounter specific group setup. Regardless, a stacked hunter group benefits far less from Enhancement than any other physical DPS class since they cannot make use of Unleashed Rage. A Resto Shaman can actually benefit hunters more with the additional mana throughput. This group also places a strain on the Enhancement Shaman to maintain totems at the appropriate range for the melee and ranged in the group.

5.2 Evaluating with WoW Web Stats
Determining if an Enhancement Shaman is performing to his potential is tricky for a raid leader as the damage output can be very random from one raid to the next, and there are no clear indicators of "using the wrong ability at the wrong time" as with other classes. The following list is intended to assist raid leaders on where to focus their efforts.

• First and foremost, familiarize yourself with this article so that you can talk the talk with the shaman. You need to understand what Stats benefit them and what sort of weapons they need, as well as getting a good understanding of just how random our DPS can be.
• Examine your Enhancement Shaman on the Armory. Ensure that his gear meets the principles outline in this article. He should not have Hit gems, his gear should be properly enchanted for maximum DPS benefit, and he should be wearing the most appropriate gear for the spec. You may need to do some research on WoWHead or Thottbot to help make gear upgrade recommendations. He should not be trying to wear hybrid gear for spell damage or healing.
• Group buffs are the primary reason you're bringing this shaman and so you should check to make sure he's fulfilling that role. Using WWS you can check to see how many times a totem was dropped on a fight by viewing the Shaman's record for that event. Check the "Performed" section and see how many times a totem was dropped. Multiply that by 120 seconds and compare to the length of the fight. The estimated uptime should be pretty close. If there are several minutes of uncovered time, your shaman is not keeping totems down and your melee group is suffering. Unleashed Rage should ideally have 100% uptime which approximately requires a 30% crit rate fully buffed.
• Evaluating personal DPS contribution is tricky because it depends on armor level of the boss, your strategy on the boss, and the nature of the fight itself.
  
  His spread of damage should follow a general trend. Windfury attacks should account for 30-40%, Stormstrike for 10-12%. If its significantly less than that, the shaman may have forgotten to put Windfury on one or both weapons (or it ran out) or may not have been using Stormstrike on every 10sec cooldown.
  
  Shocks should be anywhere from 0-15% of his damage depending on the threat situation or magic immunities. His shock damage should come from a roughly equal number of Flame and Earth shocks, indicating a good DPS rotation of Flame-Earth-Flame. A perfect rotation would have 10 shocks per minute of combat, but given interference with stormstrike and using GCDs for consumables we could consider 7-8 shocks a minute to be an acceptable range.
  
  AutoAttack should make up the rest of his damage, normally 40-50%.
  
  There should be a minimal level of Parried attacks, indicating that he attacked from behind the boss. His Miss Rate on WWS is mostly irrelevant unless he hasn't hit capped his specials. Except for cases where debuffs cause loss of Hit %, no special attack should ever be Missed (only dodged/parried). The number of white attacks missed should not be used as an indicator of "needs more hit rating."
• In the rare situation that you had two Enhancement shaman and need to compare their performance this becomes very difficult. You cannot simply say that they have 'similar gear', you will need to compare fully raid buffed stats including all group buffs for Hit, Crit, and Attack Power. Group composition is extremely important. If one shaman only had Trueshot Aura but the other had LotP and Battle Shout, the second shaman (all else being equal) should have a significant advantage over the other. Differences of 100 AP or 5% crit can easily explain large gaps in DPS output. Also check and compare Shock rotations and Stormstrike use. More often than not though, the culprit is group buffs or using an Elixir instead of a Flask.

6 Simulations
The nature of windfury and flurry interactions make closed form modeling extremely difficult and prone to a high degree of deviation. The Enhancement community turned to combat simulators as a way to model our DPS to make informed decisions. Currently the best utility for doing this is Yo!'s simulator.

To use Yo's simulator, load the armory or view your character paperdoll in-game. Make a note of which buffs you have active. Input your stats into the first panel, including your strength and agility for Blessings of Kings calculations. (You do not need BoK on your character for this) Your Hit% should be a sum of the paperdoll value and any from talents. (Nature's Guidance and Improved Dual Wielding do not show up in the paper doll)

Change the panel to the Procs and Buffs pages and enter things appropriately. Not all trinkets are represented, some things like the Bloodlust Brooch should be added as a static AP value to your stats. (Benefit * LengthOfBuff / Cooldown)

Yo's Sim is most accurate when its run for long periods of time, multiple times. If you want EP values, the recommended method is to run the sim for 5,000 - 10,000 hours between 5-10 times, taking the average of all the EP values as the result. If you want to simply compare DPS between item upgrades, multiple runs at 1,000 hours should be sufficient. The length of the sim run helps to smooth out the randomness of windfury/flurry in our DPS model.

7 Useful Links and Addons

• DisqoDice - written by Disquette this addon will display nicely sync'd bars illustrating shock, stormstrike, and windfury cooldowns, and a new watershield timer to take advantage of the new watershield in 2.3.
• Enhancer, available at WowAce. This in-game mod will display EP tooltips, can import personal EP values from Yo!'s simulator, and can show a wide variety of shaman data in-game such as WF cooldown, totem twisting timer, etc.
• LootRank is useful for comparing gear based on statweights. This page includes all the new ZA gear as well as support for Haste, -Armor and Expertise.
• Pawn Addon Latest version now supports haste, expertise, and -Armor, as well as having a GUI to fill in the stat weights. This will add a "rating" to your item tooltips that you can fill in with the EP values, allowing you to view the EP value of an item in-game.
• ShamanFriend Provides a large number of shaman related alerts for missing weapon imbues, missing water shield, and can output results of purges, interrupts, bloodlust to your party/raid. Also features a totem timer.

8 Changelog

• 13 Feb 08 - Changed prot paladins to wrath of air rather than windfury
• 8 Feb 08 - Finished re-formatting the wiki stuff back into normal forum formatting
• 6 Feb 08 - Complete restructuring and a decent rewrite of the post to match the upcoming wiki article

Great post.

Bravo!

I think Lootzor and Pawn work the same way: you give each stat a "weight" value; large weight means the stat is more important.

I'm more comfortable working with small numbers than with the 100s, but as long a the ratios are the same, I think you're good.

For someone at the Kara/Gruul/Mag level (2200 AP, 25% Crit, 22% Hit), I believe Tornhoof and I agree that the lootzor values are:

Str = 1.1
Agi = 1.0
AP = 0.5
CR = 1.0
HR = 0.7

In fact, here's a link to that search in Lootzor: http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7...u1hedu.7heeu.5

Disquette's values were a little different, mainly because used a broader range of stats and averaged across them all.

As a matter of style/utility, I'd think you'd put these at the top of your post rather than at the bottom, but that's a pretty minor comment.


I'm not sure where it is, but you might want to add a sentence or two showing why INT and MP5 are wasted on our gear--the weakness of our DPM, basically.

Very good post.

I would add the GM/HW one-handers in the list of available blue offhands. I use the axe currently because heroic bosses despise dropping weapons for me. (Got exalted with CE trying to get an offhand..)

Perhaps you were referring to having both weapons enchanted, but Enchant Weapon Potency is only +20 Strength (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22553).
Just to add to it, the 2.6 blue OHs drop in Heroic UB from Hungarfen, Heroic Old Hillsbrad from Lieutenant Drake, and Heroic Crypts like you mentioned; the level 70 blue HWL weapons are also 71.7 DPS.

Good post.

Thank the maker!

I was getting headache's trying to de-crypt the Itemization thread

Might be worthwhile to dispel some common misconceptions and set in stone a couple things, such as:
--Windfury Weapon suffers neither from the OH 50% penalty for OH procs, nor the dual-wield 24% miss rate. This means that (assuming identical weapons), MH and OH procs are identical.
--Haste Rating is not bad for Enhance Shamans. There was some comically faulty theorycrafting on Blizzard's Shaman forums a while back claiming that Haste Rating actually lowered DPS. This is not the case. At all. Haste Rating will increase DPS substantially, as for any melee class with a high % of damage being white. However, Haste Rating suffers from diminishing returns as it increases and pushes WF procs closer together.

Some links to the only non-arena offhands until you hit Al'ar:

Bloodskull Destroyer
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28210

Boggspine Knuckles
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27747

and The Harvester of Souls
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27872

Oops on the Potency value. That was me copying from someone else's post.
Updating with some of this stuff now.

Well, the Windfury bonus AP is the same for each hand yes, but the procs are most definitely not the same since the OH weapon damage is reduced by 50%. I had already included a statement about this in the original post though, its in the WF section at the top.
Haste was mentioned already as well.

Edit - Can someone provide the data on Gems (8 Str and the 4Str/4Crit ones) and the meta gems of choice?

This may sound stupid but I thought I'd ask anyway; but ever since the WF-3second-cooldown nerf, has anyone tried not applying WF to their off-hand and using the WF totem to apply the WF to the off-hand? I know its less WF dmg, but maybe it out-weighs the internal cooldown of applying an off-hand self-WF?

If you cant even do this kindly disregard my post, I havent been enhance in awhile.

Oy. I totally almost put this into the post and then I thought. "nah, I think people are done asking this".

.... and so it shall go into the post.

No, do not use WF totem instead of WF Weapon. Its not nearly the same thing.

Haha, thanks! I haven't been reading the shammy-enh posts since I went resto at 70 and then ele eventually. Very good post none-the-less.

Btw im a retard...I thought WF totem buffed both weapons...stupid question! Having said that, if it was possible to self-imbued WF and totem OH WF, maybe it would be better...but who knows.

Thanks again!

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean 1 CR = 2 AP = 1.43 HR?

Yeah, that's right. "Equivalences" are just inverted "weights." For equivalencies, you're just saying "I would be equally happy getting 1 CR or 1.43 HR." For weights, you're saying "HR is 0.7 times as good as [1.0] CR."

I really like the "weight" system myself, because it allows for quick input into lootzor, and it also conforms to the AEP paradigm. You can think of those weights as AEP for us (since Agi is 1.0 as well) or CritEP if you prefer. (Technically, AGI is 0.97 = 22.1*1.1/25, but I think 1.0 is close enough for simplicity's sake.) I believe pawn uses the same approach, to give each item a "value" in the tooltip.

I've got exported pawn strings for Pater and Disquette's values:

( Pawn: v1: "AEP (Disq)": RedSocket=17.6, CritRating=1.51, Strength=2.2, MetaSocket=24, Agility=1.47, HitRating=1.08, BlueSocket=17.6, YellowSocket=17.6, Ap=1 )

( Pawn: v1: "AEP (Pater)": RedSocket=17.6, CritRating=2, Strength=2.2, MetaSocket=24, Agility=2, HitRating=1.4, BlueSocket=17.6, YellowSocket=17.6, Ap=1 )

So you can use the /pawn import command and paste those in. I scaled both to use a baseline of 1AP, and assumed 8str gems in sockets, and 24AP gem in metasocket.

That's pretty cool.

I have also added a link to Lootzor's top 10 results for every slot in my sig.

Yeah I wanted to make sure, because it seems some of Lootzor's items are out of date with the 2.1 changes and I was working on a list for myself. Now we need to figure out weighting and value for haste rating.

I can (or a helpful helper can) put haste rating into my sim pretty easily. I don't have any procs yet, but I should make the top ones (mongoose and that haste hammer at least) a priority.

Totem of the Astral Winds isn't exactly farmable, you can't reset heroic instances. It does take 15 minutes from zone in to the first boss though, should be worth doing it anytime you're doing any other Heroic in Auchindoun.

We should also include int/mp5 in our weightings (perhaps in two minute chunks). Although alot of leather is quite rated quite highly in the lootzor link, I think my back of the envelope calculations showed that we shouldn't neglect Int/mp5 completely: http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...postcount=1026 http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...postcount=1039

It may be that, at higher levels of gear, the percentage of damage that consists of Shocks will be so low that it's more worthwhile to just gear without thought to mana and reduce the number of shocks. But, at my level, with 0 spell damage, shocks are still a significant portion of my damage (~156 dps with debuffs). Since I am at the point where it is possible to run OOM during a full burn cycle, there must exist some equivalence between extra mana vs extra melee stats.

AP and +hit has the advantage of doing double duty of increasing melee damage while boosting mana gains, but relying on SR completely is also not always optimal. Timing SR with a trinket maximises mana gain, but you have to time it when you can be certain you won't waste SR procs. However, in many encounters, there exist damage windows where it's optimal to save your trinket for. These two scenarios don't always occur at the same time.

With a full burn DPS cycle being estimated at least ~13k mana per two minutes, we need to consider the question: What is the optimal ratio of intellect and mp5 to melee stats?

This will be a multivariable function which several critical points exist. Some things to consider:
-Does there exist any itemization points where the additional melee damage outweighs being able to shock every cooldown?
-If there is not, what is the minimum mana pool, mp5 and mana from SR required to sustain a full burn cycle.

Panny: I guess your mileage may vary. Some shaman have mana issues, others never do. It all depends on your gear, your raid composition, and the encounter.

It's impossible to have a realistic "dps weight" for mp5, int or stamina, because there is no direct connection between them and the other dps stats. At best, you should establish the amount of mana used in a 2 minute burn cycle, and develop a formula to express how much minimum mana a shaman would need, based on his AP (since AP directly feeds your mana regen with SR). mp5 is going to always, always, always be an inferior stat to Int for a decently geared shaman, since that shaman will be regenerating more mana with SR than he has room for in his small mana pool, and Int is a much cheaper itemization stat.

Furthermore, a 'full burn cycle' of mana consumption is nearly always constant, so there's not a lot of variables involved. Just determine the formula needed for complete sustainability based on buffed AP and weapon speed.

Personally, I raid with a Ret pally. <3 JoW

Curious, i wonder how big the difference is between the WF weapon enchant, and the WF totem (both talented).

The biggest difference is that Windfury Weapon is 2 attacks. The totem is only 1.

so if i read this correclty . axe of the deepwoods with the flurry axe fails for lvling and i should get a slower weapon instead of the flurry 1 . im lvl 52 btw

As for further models you can add my EquipOptimizer, which includes my Enh model.
http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

The other shaman models are just fine, they should give you correct results.
The holy priest model is fine too, the shadow model is not finished
The protection tank model is not completely finished, but the results should be ok.
Rogue isn't even started.

It has some certain problems with selecting the right gems and it has some problems if you actually lock too many item slots, you should always leave like 2-3 open, otherwise it might as well crash.

My thought was that INT would have such a low weight in comparison to the other stats that it wasn't worth calculating. But I suppose we should back that up with some math.

My approach with "weights" is to answer the question, "If someone gave you 1 item point, what would you want it to be?" Right now, the answer is 1 Str (weight 1.1). If you couldn't get that, you'd want either 1 CR or 1 Agi (weight 1) or 2 AP (weight 0.5). If you couldn't get those, you'd say 1 HR (weight 0.7).

Where does INT fit in there? I'll do a super rough calc that perhaps other people could refine.

1 INT = 15 mana.

Converting mana into damage: ES spam is 675 dmg / 535 mana, or 1.26 DPM. (Not accounting for FS/ES rotations or SS debuff, rough numbers.)

So the 1 INT gives 15 * 1.1 (kings) * 1.26 = 21 damage. Generously, we can say that you get to reuse it every 2 minutes because of SR, making this 21/120 = 0.18 dps.

(I'm overlooking the ES cooldown, because the max number of shocks in a 2 min window is controlled by mana, not by that cooldown.)

Tornhoof's sim and my sim agreed earlier this week that 100 AP would add about 22 dps (to someone with approx. full kara gear). That's 0.22 DPS/AP, compared to 0.18 DPS/INT. Ratioing down from AP's weight, the weight for INT should be about 0.5 * 18/22 = 0.41.


These are really rough numbers and there might be errors. But if they're approximately right, INT is so weak that you'd prefer even 1 point of AP to 1 point of INT.

Nice Pater but don't forget to add the miniscule spell crit rating that a point of Int gives as well

It seems to have some absurd droprate, which is a pity. I got mine on the first kill and I can't say I'm mad that I did :P.

I like seeing this result. It makes me feel good about giving INT at least some weight in my Lootzor string. It raises a couple questions for me:

What's the maximum mana pool required for 2 minutes of SS, ES/FS, and totems between Shamanistic Rage (plus mana pot) cooldowns?
I think someone has done this work before, but it's easier for me to duplicate it than to search for it.
SS x 120/10 = 236*12 = 2832
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 225 + 243 + 90 + 153*2 = 864 (note this is with Totemic Focus, adjust upwards by 25% if this doesn't apply to you... now that I explicitly see that this talent is only worth 288 mana/120 sec = 12mp5, I might get rid of it)
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 120/6/2, minus one lost to GCD = 535*9 = 4815
FS x 120/6/2, minus one lost to GCD = 500*9 = 4500
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -238
2832 + 864 - 720 + 4815 + 4500 - 238 = 12053

We can then safely say that any INT which raises our buffed mana pool above 12053 is going to be useless, if we can get a refill off of SR + mana pot. If one waited until their mana pool were depleted by the amount of a Super Mana Pot at the start of a fight, chugged one, and then continued chugging each time the CD was up, you would get a larger "effective" mana pool without any more INT. A Super Mana is at least 1800 and averages 2400 mana, so if you accept the average, you don't need INT which raises the buffed mana pool above 9653. (Do pots still crit?)

Can we expect to fill that up with Shamanistic Rage?
Obviously, this is going to vary a lot with gear; and as most shamans know, it also depends on the fight (whether or not you can get a nice solid 30 seconds of attacking the ass end of a boss mob without having to move). We know that you get 15% of your AP back per proc. Do we have hard data on whether this is PPM or percentage-based?

I was under the impression that SR was PPM based, obviously no-cooldown.

SS x 120/10 = 226*12 = 2712
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 288 + 312 + 115 + 196*2 = 1107
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 120/6/2, 5 seconds + 1 sec for gcd = 460*10 = 4600
FS x 120/6/2, 5 seconds + 1 sec for gcd = 430*10 = 4300
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -237
2712 + 1107 - 720 + 4600 + 4300 - 237 = 11762

With 2 extra shocks and the 5% extra damage adding up to a third extra shock in damage. With one out of the 20 proccing Elemental devastation for +9% crit as well on average.

With an Enhance/Ele spec of http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

So it's a savings of only about 300 mana with 3 extra shocks of damage, and a solid chance at proccing +9% crit every two minutes.

SR in my experience seemed to be PPM, as with a two hander it was proccing almost every swing fairly reliably. However dual wield seems to be PPM per hand, so you end up with almost the same effect at about twice the rate. The description is also fairly typical of a PPM description on the tooltip.


Also keep in mind that once your attack power reaches a certain breakpoint the time frame changes. You'll be filling your mana pool and able to refresh all your totems inside the window of SR, and even get free shocks off as well.

With SR lasting 30 seconds and enough attack power, you can almost guarantee yourself full mana at the end of 30 seconds. With a full totem refresh.

So a full totem refresh is about 8 seconds with GCD I believe. Which leaves 22 seconds for other spells. Which is 3 shocks untalented, or 4 talented.

If we assume the enh/resto build and full mana at the end of SR we have:

SS x 90/10 = 236*9 = 2124
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 225 + 243 + 90 + 153*2 = FREE (SHould be able to drop and recover during SR uptime)
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720 (will be up during SR)
ES x 90/7/2 = 535*6 = 3210 (there's rounding here, but rounding down due to not being able to land a partial shock)
FS x 90/7/2 = 500*6 = 3000
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -238 (Should probably not count as it will happen during SR?)
2124 - 720 + 3210 + 3000 - 237 = 7377

With Enh/Ele:

SS x 90/10 = 226*9 = 2034
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 288 + 312 + 115 + 196*2 = FREE
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 90/6/2 = 460*7.5 = 3450 (15 shocks, so one needs to be 8, averaging as it can go either way)
FS x 90/6/2 = 430*7.5 = 3225
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -237
2034 - 720 + 3450 + 3225 - 237 = 7752 (with 3 more shocks and 75% of the damage of another shock)

NOTE that these are only if you are able to maintain a shock rotation and re-drop all totems during SR, ending at full mana. If you are able to proc 400 mana/second, you can get 12000. 500 mana every two seconds (which is more reasonable at higher ends of gear) is 7500 mana during SR. The closer you can get to the end of SR with full mana without interrupting your shock/SS rotation, the closer to efficient you get. Right now I only ever seem to need the cheap combat mana pots to keep shocks going. Although I'm usually aggro capped before that, or have trouble keeping on the mob for the full duration.

Quick Conclusion
I have some overlap and rounding issues here, and will assume that hardly everyone keeps up a perfect dps rotation on every cooldown, or gets 100% uptime. These numbers are pointing at about 7400-7800 under optimum conditions and a certain level of AP. I'd say 8500 is probably the ideal amount of mana to allow for breathing room WITHOUT relying on pots. If you have pots you either can get more breathing room or a lower mana pool. Or save the cooldowns for non-mana pots.

I also hardly ever find myself using totemic call unless I'm moving away from my old totems, as I'd rather refresh them one at a time and not take the buffs off my group for sake of my mana efficiency. There's also water shield to consider, which procs off of many more conditions then Lightning Shield, so I usually keep it up all the time.

Not including CoE, imp. scorch, Misery or SS debuff is a mistake imho, ES+FS rotation is ~156 DPS. According to the simple maths I did comparing Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless vs Cyclone Spaulders, if you accept that it is possible to run OoM, there's definitely cases where going for the int is more advantageous.

I suppose creating a ratio isn't as useful as other stats, as after your mana pool is a certain size compared to your gains from SR, it stops contributing to your DPS. The fact that the question "how much int do I need" will vary for different encounters, your stats, and raid composition. With no gear changes, on one week of Gruul, I gained 3-4k mana per Shamanistic Rage. This week, with a Survival Hunter and two Warriors in my group (meaning I get Battle Shout for the entire fight rather than just the first half), I gained 7.5k mana.

They can, but generally, Fel Mana Potions are a better bet (3.2k mana restored).

Also, don't forget that Bloodlust is 750 mana. Obviously, you don't cast it ever 2 minutes, it needs to be considered.

I use WWS to give me an indication of how much mana will be restored in a given encounter. I believe it is PPM.

All this theorycraft is irritating though. Surely with all the high-end raiders we have posting here, some would have a heavy leather gear setups they can post experience about using?

6k unbuffed mana. 1400 unbuffed ap.

I never go out of mana in raids. I spam stormstrike every cast, and shock every single opportunity when threat isn't a concern. During unleashed rage, I mana dump every chance that I can, even using Fire Nova Totem / Searing Totem rotations =X. Mana is just not an issue unless my unleashed rage is interrupted somehow. (Void Reaver is annoying for this reason. I usually save my healthstones for Unleashed Rage, and just eat a few ground poundings).

We frequently have JoW up however.

Well, I'm nearly 100% kara leather and have been avoiding anything with mana for a while. The only time I have mana problems is when I forget to use SR.

All accounts of JoW make me rather jealous.

Pater, is that with a full shock rotation?

I'm really curious how you guys are managing to do it, since I know that, for example, on Magtheridon I can go all-out without worrying about threat, which means I can shock every CD, which means I need to chug at least 1 mana pot over the course of the fight -- even with 1494 unbuffed AP, 6.3k unbuffed mana. I can only assume that the difference is JoW? (Or are you on a clicking rotation for Magtheridon? That would also do it.)

Just to provide a contrary description of my experience on Void Reaver: I get to stay in through pounding (we brought a ridiculously low number of melee, like two, to our first kill last night) but I am threat-capped from just autoattacking + SS, so mana's not a concern there. (It might be if I had two piece Tier 5, as I would definitely take advantage of the instant-cast LHW on that fight. Even though it would increase my threat, I sometimes have to run out for pounding and/or pop a healthstone when I'm getting scared that I won't get healed.) I think if our 4th tank were better, I would not be quite so threat-capped, he really can't keep up with the first 3.

Panny -- occasionally I have mana problems when pushing shocks to the max. Most of the time the problems are SR-related, though: either forgetting to use it, or having some of it wasted because of shatter and the like.

With that kind of unbuffed AP you should be getting pretty much an entire mana bar back on Mag. The first 1-2 min of Mag are very mana intense because you (should be) redropping WF and SoE at each Channeler as you move. The last Mag kill we did I popped SR as soon as we started and just started burning mana down on the Channeler. After that just use it every time its up and you shouldn't have to use any pots. Do you not have paladins at all? If you do, and are not getting JoW, you need to yell at them. My paladins claimed they "couldn't keep judgments on" until I bitched about it non stop and made them do it. Now they keep it up all the time because they can see the huge returns we get from JoL and JoW.
You can bring more melee than that - we did VR first time last night also, had 4 tanks and 5 melee in the pounding the whole time. 1-2 Shaman can chain heal the melee through the entire fight with no issues.

Maybe there should be a few lines in the OP about which pally buffs are best for enhancement. In an ideal world, you'd get all four (kings, might, wisdom, salvation), but in reality we usually only run with three paladins. I tend to prefer kings, might, salve as my combination, due to the fact that kings and might mean I gain a healthy amount of mana back from each SR proc.

These are the pros and cons of each based on my experiences:

Kings - Increases all stats by 10%.
Pros: Good in almost every situation.
Cons: Causes a decent increase in threat generation due to harder hits and more shocks.

Might - Increases AP by 220.
Pros: More AP means stronger attacks, more SR mana returns.
Cons: Threat generation when combined with kings. Paladins have to buff this separately and refresh during battle.

Wisdom - Returns 42 mp5.
Pros: Best blessing for mana regen, shines on long fights.
Cons: Not always necessary with proper use of SR.

Salvation - Decrease threat generated by 30%
Pros: Best blessing for threat problems, allows 30% more dps.
Cons: Useless blessing when not threat capped.

In general, the other shaman always want kings, wisdom and salvation. I usually have to coordinate with the wisdom pally to get the five minute version of might and have it refreshed during battle. I placed that under con because if the pally is dead or healing then you're out of a buff after the first five minutes.

It's also worth noting (perhaps under might?) that on nights where we have a fury warrior in the dps group I tend to need salvation more, due to battleshout.

This is slightly off topic, but proper placement of totems helps a lot during the first 2 minutes of Mag. With 30yd totems you can place them between the first and second channeler and not have to redrop until you move to the third one. I usually end up dropping totems twice after the pull, and it makes a noticeable difference in my mana pool going into phase 2. I also save SR and bloodlust till the 3rd channeler, but that's just my personal preference.

I've noticed a lot of fights where good totem placement can make mana management much easier, like Mag and Hydross. Just make sure your group knows where you're placing the totems so they can stay near them.

One thing that seems conspicuously absent from the collected theorycraft is metagem choices.

EDIT: appears that relentless earthstorm is the best choice, after reading one of the source threads. Still -- would be an appropriate addition to this excellent summary.

99% sure the math was done in the itemization thread proving 3% is better. It's nicer now that it also procs on yellow damage instead of just white.

You too? My condolences ... although I'm basically numb by now ... I think I'm up to 25+ runs without seeing it drop. Exalted with consortium, got all sorts of ethereum keys, a fel barrier, etc ... but that totem .... that totem ... why. Why. Why.

In other news, my other white whale, Skulker's Greaves, was harpooned, brought to port, and made into exceedingly expensive perfumes in the deep hours of the night yesterday.

PS: A guildmate (and member of these forums) has been trying to talk me out of socketing those pants with 3 rigid dawnstones. He's been reading these forums closely and is insisting I go for triple +8 str.

Here's my armory, with me wearing them in all their unsocketed/unpatched glory:

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...oroth&n=Khrash

Once I patch them later today, I'll be starting with a baseline of 1498 ap and 203 hit unbuffed. (If I push cap, I can change out edgewalker to rapscallion, and/or pick up a pendant of the perilous to replace worgen claw).

Advice on which 3 gems to stuff in them?

Grats!

I'd agree with your friend. I give STR a 1.1 weight and HR only 0.7.

Right now, I have 4cr/6sta in mine for the yellow slot, but that's because I just haven't gotten around to changing it since settling on the stat weights.


According to a few sims and other approaches, HR just isn't that hot above some level. You don't even need to be that close to the cap (25.5) before it starts giving diminishing returns. (As far as why this might be, I would guess it's because SS and WF only have 5% base miss rate.)

Yeah, I do redrop WF/SoE; I also drop Fire Elemental Totem for the first 2 channelers (we MD one onto the first tank and he tanks 2 in one spot), as well as earth shocking heals/shadow bolt volleys. I typically use my trinkets on the channelers but save my SR for Magtheridon, which lets me get a full bar back if I take a few seconds off of shocking. Heroism, I don't bother popping for the first 2 Channelers because I would just pull aggro, I usually save it for the 3rd or so. I'm going to assume that any difference left over is due to JoW; we usually carry 3-4 Holy paladins, maybe I can get one of them to start judging it for me.
Your friend is right. Go triple +8 str, or if for some perverse reason you want the +dodge rating bonus, use one of the purple +4 str/+6 sta gems.

Rob, once you've had a pally judge wisdom in a fight like Magtheridon where you're essentially standing there the entire fight (minus any backup clicking duties you may have), you won't want to ever go back. In the case of Mag, JoW restores just about the same amount of mana SR does when using SR every cooldown (SR restores about 410 mana on proc untrinketed in raids).

In any event, I too have harbored the fear of losing too much Int due to wearing leather but the more my Int goes down, I can see that it truly has a very small effect. Now I just need this link handy when I bid on rogue gear.

Can you elaborate on this point just a little bit? Since the WF bonus is not halved by dual wielding, why do you not want WF to proc on the off-hand? Is it because the WF bonus is applied to damage that's been reduced by the DW penalty? Or because itemization naturally lends itself to weaker off-hand weapons?

Offhand procs do less damage than main hand procs, and they share the same lockout timer. By minimizing the amount of offhand procs in comparison to main hand procs the theory is that you will generate more overall damage. This isn't quite as noticeable at earlier levels of itemization since it has been revealed that the AP from the Windfury proc applied to the offhand is not halved as you would expect, but once you reach SSC/TK/MGlad level gear it becomes much more pronounced as more of your damage is generated from AP.

drats - Good idea on the totem placement, don't know why I didn't think of that.

Krashz and Negative - I went through the itemization thread like 3 times and somehow keep missing the couple of posts that debated meta gems, if someone can summarize it up for me to put in the OP or link it, I'd be obliged. Quite busy at work right now.

There's a whole thread on that here:
The Change to Windfury and You! (does not apply to warriors)

The general idea is that the WF bonus isn't halved but the damage still is. Everytime your OH procs it's keeping your MH from proccing for 3 seconds.

Yes I understand that much, but why do they do less damage? Is it just from the DW off-hand penalty?

IE- mainhand attack WF damage would be: x+WF AP, offhand attack WF damage would be: x*.6 (or whatever the penalty is)+WF AP?

edit: OK I think I got it thank you.

Yes. The offhand damage is halved from what it would be if it were a main hand attack, then the bonus AP from Windfury Weapon's proc is applied.

Yeah. The original post is a little unclear on this, and it also has the consequence of CR being EQUAL to AP, after considering the item budget. Perhaps some clarification should indicate that AP and CR are equally good (approximately) due to their different itemization costs. It also means that Strength is superior to both, after considering Kings.

Is the goal of this thread for discussion, or only reference of 'confirmed' theroycraft? (The following seems out of place in the itemization thread.)

So, does anyone else juggle WF totem and AGI, trying to keep both up? I've got a hotkey for it (tied to stormstrike, to help time the WF Totem buff), but I really only use it in the "go nuts" portion of a fight - usually the low hp enrage portion where I'm trying to mana dump any way that I can.

For the record, my macro is:
/castsequence reset=6 Stormstrike, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem;

It's bound to a more obscure place on my keyboard, due to it's infrequent use. It's pretty fun, although it really means you spend pretty much the entire fight in the global cooldown. I usually mix Fire Nova Totem in there too, since it's about the best mana dump I have.

Its been suggested a lot and dismissed by most as a waste of mana and mostly a "oh gee isn't this neat" sort of thing that isn't really useful. It puts you on GCD pretty much the entire time and requires most of your attention focused on that instead of on the fight or maybe helping top someone off that's about to die (although I guess macro'd its easier).

Yar. I think that's why I tend to use it in the "Oh God, Leotheras is going to enrage in 20 seconds!" sort of situations

I wouldn't bother without a macro. It's pretty low maintenance as long as it's hotkeyed properly.

This post is a decent summary of metas and boot enchants. I tried finding the math as well that I thought was there but couldn't find it.

[Shaman] Itemizing Enhancement at 70

Basically the haste gem has the internal cooldown that makes it pretty terrible, while the change to Relentless making it affect yellow damage makes it by far the better choice.

There's something that has been bugging me for a while. I always see people posting that you need a certain amount of hit rating to be effective, usually you see numbers around 20% or 200 hit rating. Or you see people concerned that they can't afford to lose hit rating. Is there really any truth to this though? I've been finding when using tools like pawn and lootzor that items lacking +hit often score very high. Since AEP ratings are designed to give a genuine value to items, are these ratings somehow broken? Or are players just clinging to the notion that hit is required out of habit?

My curiosity on this subject has led me to make myself a bit of a guinea pig. I've been taking items based solely on AEP style ratings for the last month or so, my hit rating has plummeted from around 220 to 111. My damage however feels like it's improved though I haven't been logging much data so I can't say with any certainty.

When Pater posted his sim one thing I checked right off was whether the relative value of hit rating changed depending on how much you had. I put in regular raid buffed values and lowered the +hit from gear to 0%, then I increased it by 5% and ran it again. I then did the same change again, going from 11% to 16%. The results came out as such:

0% -> 5% (9% -> 14%)
847.5 -> 875.8 = 28.3 DPS gained

11% -> 16% (20% -> 25%)
910.4 -> 940 = 29.6 DPS gained

Is there anything I'm missing? I'm trying find anything other than anecdotal evidence that a certain amount of hit rating is more beneficial than an equal amount of item budget spent on AP or crit stats. Certainly due to the non-linear cost you want items that have a balance of all DPS stats, but many pieces just aren't itemized that way. Should I be passing over items that score higher overall for ones that though scoring lower have a more even stat distribution?

Having high amounts of hit rating has the somewhat intangible benefit of guaranteeing lots of hits when you use SR, in addition to avoiding a situation where you are crit capped (not really a problem since 2.1). The magic number formula is purely in terms of DPS.

The rule of thumb I've been using recently (now that I'm actually starting to have a moderate amount of socketed gear available to me) is any piece where the bonus is useful to me from a dps standpoint (typically AP/or +hit bonuses) and I can reach the bonus using purely +hit/str/ap gems, I'll match colors.

Everything else +8 str.

That being said I was finding myself lacking due to getting pieces of dps gear with no +hit and trying to stay above certain minimums, so threw in a little extra +hit.

Regarding the whole paladin thing, we've had bad luck keeping active raiding paladins (horde guild). After having 4 people reroll as pallys with BC, 3 of them stopped playing due to one reason or another, and we're only now back up to 3 pallys. Typically running with one, 2 if we're lucky. So I usually end up asking for might and getting the opportunity for kings maybe 20% of the time.

True, however sacrificing some of that hit for for strength would go some way to compensating you. Just some quick numbers and my math is fairly poor so I may make some mistakes.

Lets assume 2200 AP and take 100 hit rating and exchange it for 100 str. We would lose 6.33% hit and I guess 6.33% SR procs? Our overall mana gain would go down by 6.33% as well if I'm correct. With kings and UR that 100 str would gain us 242 AP? Which would gain us an additional 36.3 mana per SR proc pushing them from 330 to 366.3 an 11% gain. So you'd get 6.33 percent fewer procs bu tthe procs would return 11% more mana, assuming no errors in my math which is a pretty big assumption. Either way it should be a small change.

You're correct as well that with the greatly reduced glancing rate the crit cap even without as much +hit is still quite high.

if you lose 6.33% hit, you loose (white swings / total swings) SR procs.

Assume you have 10 white swings in 10 seconds (2.6 weapons, perma-hasted).

You would also have 2 stormstrike swings, and probably 4 windfury swings that are unaffected by your drop in hit (since they're maxed out by your talents hit-wise).

So, instead of losing 100% * 6.33% = 6.33% SR loss, you actually have
10/16 = 62.5% * 6.33% = 4.0% fewer SR procs.

I think haste rating does in fact have an impact on WF, certain ammounts of haste rating can actually have a negative impact on DPS output. I dont know if this has been brought up on these forums already, but if it hasnt here is link to a fairly informative discussion about it http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1.

Edit: A different subject. We usually have a GoA-dps group, it consists of a druid, enhancement shammy (me!), rogue, hunter and a warrior. I'd like to see some number-crunching on dps output of such a group with GoA or WF, I'd think GoA wins in such a group. Also, in the OP's analysis of WF and Agi totem, the dps increase of the shaman itself with GoA isnt added, it should be! :p

The bonus damage that the dps warrior in your group puts out using Windfury is much higher then the rest of the group combined using GoA. At least in my experience.

This was posted at the bottom of Compilation:

On why Windfury Totem is almost always the best totem to drop for any group that has a warrior DPSing in it, or pretty much any group that is not just hunters and druids:
http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...2&postcount=40
A Fury warrior will gain 200-300 DPS from WFT, eclipsing any gains that other group, in total, would gain from GoA being dropped instead. A Mortal Strike warrior will gain even more from the totem due to 2H mechanics.

Nothing in that link struck me as the poster having any idea whatsoever what he's talking about.

The numbers are linked in my post. Why are people still coming and saying "I think GoA might be better...." when you can just try it out for yourself? Go do Magtheridon, use WF this week and GoA the next with the same setup. This isn't difficult to test.

This is a stupid group if you're outside Kara and you shouldn't ever see it in 25 man raids. If your warrior is halfway competent he will see tremendous gains from Windfury that will likely eclipse the DPS gained by the rest of the group from GoA.

I'd like to interject at this time that we have quite a few theories going on here, and I'm not sure how much they've actually been tested. This worries me.

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't know about the Windfury offhand bonus being exactly what it is. (minor deviation from theory)

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't have discovered the 36% chance to WF when dual wielding . (major deviation from theory)

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't know that we're getting more flurried attacks than we should. (major deviation from theory)

Even blasted lands tests are fine for testing these out, but until they are tested, I'm not very comfortable with treating the results from any of this as being worth much.

For blasted lands tests, back into your numbers - run recap and find out what your actual crit rate and hit rate are, then plug those into your sim or formula. Find out how many auto-attack swings you had, compare it to what your model suggests. Find out how many windfury procs you had, compare that to the model. You wont have any dodge/block/parry/glancing, but the models and formulas need to be able to account for this situation as well, so you might as well start on the scenario that's easiest to test.

I'm not saying that any of the formulas or stat valuations are wrong, I'm saying that we currently don't seem to be confirming that they're right.

My guild is definately not the best out there, we've just started SSC 2 weeks ago, got 2 bossed down, and we are working on Tidewalker. But we seem to get the highest overal dps output with this GoA group thing. I dont see why anyone would deem this as a stupid group, 5% crit aura, battleshout, Ferocious Inspiration from the BM hunter (3% extra dmg), and totems + Unleashed Rage makes a damn fine dps group imo :p The druid also offtanks occasionally, and since their agro scales with dmg this group is also rather good for that, only thing he misses is an imp.

I understand perfectly well that the warrior's dps is WAY higher with WF, thats obvious. However, if the warrior uses stones on his weapons + GoA, the rogues uses poisons + GoA, and the other 3 dps get the benefits from GoA aswell... ah well, ill test it next Karathress, no holding back on that fight anyway. Sorry for asking

Do you not have a 2nd rogue? Only 1 in the entire raid? You'd get much more benefit from dropping the hunter out of that group and replacing him with a rogue. The DPS gain from giving Battle Shout to rogues is tremendous. And then get rid of the GoA and give the warrior and 2 rogues WF and you'll see far more DPS gains. And no, Stones + Poisons + GoA are not better than WF.

Unless you bring no other melees to your raid beyond one warrior and one rogue you can organize your groups better than this. As an enhancement Shaman you should have these people in your group in order of priority: DPS warriors, sword rogues, dagger rogues, LotP druids (LotP druids + BM hunters = happiness, so be nice and share them). If you use warriors for offtanks, having them in your group will allow them to build threat more easily with WFT and the extra AP, but they are usually better in the MT group for Imp/Tree buffs.

Having a hunter in the group for the BM bonus is not nearly worth the opportunity cost of having an additional melee gain the benefits of WFT. This is one of the most common mistakes that people make in organizing groups. Ferocious Inspiration is a flat 3% bonus to any sort of damage and it makes Hunters useful in any damage-dealing group, whereas the difference between GoA and WF for warriors and rogues is tremendous by the time you are in SSC. If you have a hunter in a mage group FI is roughly as effective as it is to a melee group, but that hunter will get far less benefit from shaman totems than a melee class would. If you have a rogue in the mage group when the hunter is in your group, you are crippling that rogue's DPS (no totems, no battle shout) and the hunter is not providing any real additional benefit (not affected by battle shout, WF does nothing, only receives half benefit from GoA/SoE). If you can provide WFT to four other melee classes you should absolutely be doing it, because nothing else will provide them with as big of a benefit as what you will.

Well, there have been more posts prior to that, and I'd suggest reading more than the OP only (check Aj, and Snorkle's replies). It truely seems like an interesting read. But to give small insight to what is being discussed there:

WF has a 3 second cooldown. Once it procs, it wont proc again in the next 3 seconds. With weapons of 2.6 speed, without flurry or anything, this means that WF *can* proc every other swing. So, WF, normal swing, WF, is possible. Now, what happens when flurry + haste-rating items make you swing faster than 1.5 seconds, lets say 1.49. To have a chance to proc WF after a WF you would need 2 swings instead of only 1. So in theory, when you get haste-rating items that make you swing faster than 1.5 seconds your WF proc rate *will* go down. Yes, your white damage will increase, but your WF dmg over time will go down. Your overal dps will be lower with 1.49 swing speed than with 1.5 swing speed.

The next question would be, how is the overal dps output when the swingspeed becomes 1.4, or 1.3, or even lower, it will be better than 1.49 thats for sure, but at what point will it be better than 1,5 speed.

The thread I linked discusses just that.

Note, this theory is about swing speed, NOT weapon speed. SLOW/SLOW is always the way to go when it comes to weapon speed.

But, if you feel that the original poster has no idea what he is talking about, please explain to me why that is the case. This thread was made by Aj and Snorkle, which are both well known on the european shaman boards for their theorycrafting.

I have always really apreciated these forums as a source of information, and tbh I'd expected a better response than "he just doesnt have a clue"

We usually dont have many rogues with us, or dps warriors for that matter. And my question wasnt "Is Stones + Poisons + GoA better than WF?". It was: Wont my group dps be better with goa, when it consists of a druid/hunter/warrior/rogue/me and the rogue and warrior use stones/poisons? :p

Anyway, lets drop this! Gimme your opinions on the haste-rating/swingspeed matter!

The haste-lowers-your-DPS discussion was hashed out some time ago; there are certain hastes that will lower your overall DPS, but they are pretty difficult to come by in actual practice. Mongoose is probably the main culprit of this but it only occurs at certain very uncommon weapon speeds (1.5 or 3.0, etc). It's pretty hard for any item that generates at least 5% haste to lower your DPS.

If your warrior wishes to use a crit stone instead of windfury, find another warrior.

If the rogue wants to use a MH poison instead of windfury, and he's not mutilate + mob isn't immune to poisons, there are better rogues you can find.

If you have to explain it in simple terms to them, say it's like sword spec, except that it works on any weapon, doesn't use talent points, and procs 4 times as much; all they have to do is not buff their mainhand weapon. If they continue to be idiots, well, you can't help that; just request that other melee dps, that can not only hit their BS/Hemo/SS/S&D/MS/WW/BT/whatever on cycle but also is willing to keep an unbuffed mainhand, be found and put into your group. Or ask to be grouped with only hunters / ferals and drop GoA for classes that it'll actually help a good deal.

I'd tend to agree with this assertion, especially given how well haste procs treat Shamans in terms of itemization efficiency.

It makes sense to me that a mainhand that is slightly slower than your offhand would be detrimental to your dps. This is because your offhand will always be hitting slightly before your mainhand, which gives a good chance that your offhand will be eating significantly more windfury procs.

How does this effect two weapons with the same speed? If both of your weapons are always hitting

Hey!

As an enhancement shaman, I have problems often with my task being recognized (as a buffer).

So I have a petition tho whoever knows how to code, that would greatly help our spec.

Make an addon that calculates the DPS given to party by our buffs. This can be somewhat complicated, but at least some parts are easy.

By selecting Skill Details in swstats, you can get how many Windfury damage a player did. So, it should be easy to extract those numbers and summarize them up in a separate addon. I'm finding that rogues do an average 7% damage from my Windfury Totem, and warriors go up to 15%.

Now, this part was easy. How to calculate STR totem (or AGI if it's down instead of Windfury) and Unleashed Rage?

I'm sure the mats are not easy for certain classes considering instants and procs, but if Recap and SWStats can get so much accurate info about that data, it should not be hard for someone with enough knowledge on scripting and game mechanics to code something easy that can report at the end of the fight something like:

Tradewind's own damage: 340932.
WF given to party: +89023.
+STR given to party: +14932.
UR given to party: +40834.
Total damage added to the raid: 485721.

The problem with such an approach is that every other class will want to be recognized for its own "non-personal DPS contribution" and some are much more easy to quantify than others.

Also keep in mind that an enhancement shaman is compared to a restoration shaman when boosting the melee group.

Your contribution is 13 extra strength for SoE totem, 133 AP for WF totem and 10% AP (we could average this to 200 AP I guess although it is scalable) from UR.

I agree that previously ele/enh shaman were competing with resto shaman. But this comparison was a lot better pre-expansion than it is now.

If you take one of the many generic melee dps powerhouse groups for example...
feral,
dps war,
rogue,
rogue,
<some shaman>

A resto shaman can still provide great buffs to this group similar to an enhancement shaman. However the resto shamans totems and the other members group buffs (Battle shout, lotp) will be entirely wasted on the resto shaman.

The enhancement shaman drops marginally superior totems but also takes advantage of his totems and the other melee buffs. Also Unleashed rage is a 300 AP buff in a raid setting which is certainly significant since it is almost always up. With these factors altogether, there is a very significant gap in the raid strength of a melee group with an enh shaman and one with a resto shaman.

You really don't need an addon to calculate this you can do it ahead of time with a piece of paper and a calculator.

Sure, and you can sum all your damage lines in the Combat Log for the last 10 minutes fight and come up with your total damage.

Are you retard? I was speaking about something fight-specific, not some dumb and generalistic %'s everyone knows already.

Don't make posts like this please.

Thanks for the WWS logs -- looking at your armory, you have about 4% more crit and 100 more AP than I do, yet deal about 10-15% more DPS. I wouldn't think the delta was that large, especially with some of that being made up by my 6-7% advantage in hit rating.

After seeing how high your DPS is on the WWS logs, I'm definitely interested in a high AP / high crit build, and lowering my hit substantially to that end. Any additional advice on your gearing philosophy is welcome. Would you prefer 1600 AP / 28% crit or 1800 AP / 24% crit?

Indeed. The percentage increases make a compelling case for an enhancement shaman in a melee group.

Whether you top some sort of "contribution" meter is pretty irrelevant, especially with all the synergistic effects that go on in a group/raid (ie how much of your UR uptime was from the crit buff you got from a feral druid etc etc).

I was looking at the same thing. That's some pretty high dps for lacking that much hit. I guess when you hit something, you hit it hard. Those 2 weapons are super nice as well. I may be rethinking my hit scenario after seeing those WWS reports and your armory.

I think being a rogue before may have had something to do with my +hit lust.

I've been running with an Enhance/Elemental build for a while now, and find it to be fairly effective overall. The 5 second cooldown on shocks especially (helpful on damage and fights where I have to help interrupt), and elemental devastation procs often enough to make the talents worthwhile - kicking my crit up to over 40% quite easily.

My main selling point for it is the ability to maintain a full shock rotation much without having to go to pots (beyond the occasionaly combat pot), on a faster cooldown, and for more damage.

The resto options are good, but you seem to have to put so many points in for that 3%. The totem range increase does help, but is usually not overly necessary with careful positioning.

I'm also trying to go for AP and crit over hit, based on Disquette and Pater's simulation results; my gear's not as good as Sebudai's though. One thing that's not indicated by just a cursory glance at his character sheet is the haste rating he's got on his gear; note that his 2.60 speed weapon is dropped to 2.53 without Flurry. If the calculations thus far in the thread are correct, Haste should be very powerful.

I'd put the higher DPS weapon in your MH and the lower DPS weapon in your OH. The speed differential doesn't matter so much, but in general I guess I'd rather have a slower weapon in the OH since it's getting fewer WF procs.

One thing that might explain some of the 15% gap on Sebudai's dps from yours is that they're swapping other shaman into his group for bloodlust. He gets it 3 times on that fight, lucky bastard.

Well, based on numbers found in this thread 1 CR = 2 AP. 4% crit is 88.4 CR so it would only take 176.8 AP to equal the benefit of 4% crit. Thus 200 AP is probably slightly better than 4% crit.

A few months ago I did some math based on my own WWS parses to assign a weighting to each stat. This is when I first discovered that +hit was overvalued, and that crit and attack power are normally a better use of item budget for us. The weightings I came up with a few months ago are very close to what you will find in this thread, and since these guys are probably better at math than I am, I just use theirs.

1 CR = 1.43 HR = 2 AP. Decide how much you value stamina in comparison to those three stats and it will be very easy for you to figure out which items are upgrades for you.

Honestly it's best to not think in terms of stacking one stat. All three of these stats are good for us, and they all depend on eachother. You want all three of them, and what is important is the quantities involved. Yes, one of them might be the 'superior' use of item budget, but it's not like we get to design our own items. We have to use what Blizzard gives us. My hit rating isn't intentionally low because I think +hit sucks, that's just how it worked out for me by following the above stat weightings.

The randomness of drops had an impact aswell because I don't hold out for the statistically best upgrade. If an item is an upgrade, I'm sending on it, regardless of if there is a bigger upgrade out there.

Anyway, yeah we switch our Bloodlusts around like that a lot. Basically whoever benefits the most from it on any given encounter is going to get most, if not all of the Bloodlusts. Also, I've picked up quite a few upgrades very recently(bracer, ring, cloak and breastplate off the top of my head), so the gear in my armory profile is better than what I was using for those WWS parses I linked.

While I am leveling my Shaman (53 now) -- any comment on the utility of Figurine - Golden Hare (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21756)? -- a lot of Draenei Shaman are also going to be JC alts. Has anyone measured the passive runspeed of the trinket vs the boot enchant? (I'll do it tonight if not) I have some other random JC trinkets but nothing special yet, I think all good trinket drops are BRD and higher. +8 AP is the best "offensive" trinket thus far, and based on the math in those linked threads I think run speed trinket might be better than +8AP.

(I'll move this somewhere if it's appropriate, I just couldn't find a better place)

It provides the same bonus as any talent, metagem or enchant does - +8% running speed.

So it's just fine while leveling JC, having a third escape option beside stoneclaw + spirit wolf and [Nifty Stopwatch]. But it's not really better then putting Enchant Boots - Minor Speed on your feet or using [Defiler's Mail Greaves] (of any level).

But there are several trinkets, i would prefer over it:
Tidal Charm http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1404
Figurine - Truesilver Boar http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21763 (not because of the AP, but the boar is really strong for this level)
Rune of the Guard Captain - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=19120 (Horde)
Lifestone - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=833
Linken's Boomerang - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11905#00zc
Hand of Justice - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11815

How would you value Haste Rating compared to CR/AP/HR - assuming your weaponspeed will remain over 1.5 with BL and flurry?

Probably something like 1 CR = 1.43 HR = 2 AP = 1 Haste Rating. According to math posted earlier in this thread it should actually only take 0.9 haste rating to equal the benefit of 2 AP/1 CR/1.43 HR, so I'm rounding up a little.

Hey Tornhoof, GREAT WORK on setting up the filters! There's only one problem...when I import my armory profile, and lock the items and do an optimization for gems (your v12 did seem to indicate that different gems were more useful depending on gear)...the entire program crashes and has to be restarted. Any idea whats causing this?

You currently can not optimize Gems only, you shouldn't take the Gems too serious either, since they are only optimized locally (for each item individually), not globally for all the items combined.

Few discussions I'd like to see:

Metagem choice?
Haste value as a stat?
T5 bonus VS T6 bonus?
2.7MH/2.7OH vs 2.7MH/2.8OH
+4STR/+4CR better than +8HIT at wich +hit threshold?
Tsunami Talisman VS Ashtongue Talisman

I'm sure you already know the answer to at least 3 of those questions by this point in the discussion.

Metagem - generally accepted as 3% Crit Dmg > Haste effect > soul shard gem > stam/stun resist

I believe we are treating haste as a 0.9 or 1.0 weight on stats.

The tiered bonuses I can't really speak of since I'm not up to that point yet, although the T5 2pc certainly has value for a player who plays to the hybrid/support style, less value to those who want to be a rogue in mail.

There is no detrimental effect that anyone is aware of from having an OH slower than the MH to the Windfury cycle, the only downside is that you lose the "bugged" flurry effect from having the same MH/OH speeds.

Str/Crit gems are always better than +8 Hit. No shaman should ever be using +8 Hit gems unless for some silly reason they chose not to grab the +9% Hit from talents.

The Ashtongue trinket was shown in the Itemization thread to have less AP bonus over time than the Bloodlust brooch did, so the Tsunami Talisman would likely be the better choice.

a- As long as you happen to have 2 blue gems use Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, failing that Swift Skyfire.

b- One point of haste rating is worth about one point of strength (only 3 posts above yours).

c- T5 4piece is roghly 3-4% dps, T6 4piece is closer to 2%, though the gains from having 4 pieces of the superior tier 6 outweigh this.

d- Conclusions have been inconclusive.

e- The str/crit gem will ALWAYS be better for all levels of gear from zero hit rating to hit capped (unless youre not actually enh specced, just wanting to do some physical dps with your resto spec).

f- On a stand and deliver fight the Ashtongue Talisman looks like a 137AP which is far superior to the Tsunami Talisman. Edit:: or not. Depends on the uptime of the Tsunami AP buff, one proc every 70 seconds or more often would make the Tsunami better than the Ashtongue, any less would favour the Ashtongue (excuse my bad midnight maths).

edit:: Beaten by Malan.

Here's the original analysis done on the Ashtongue -
Its an upgrade over the Bloodlust Brooch, but you lose the control over when the proc occurs.

Please, check this:



http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/5...izationry2.jpg

If you detect any flaw, tell me.

I'm not sure that I agree with your statement that the Tiered set items are meant to be the "best" available. Tiered sets are good, but often they're good because they work in conjunction with other items. I don't think its bad that non-set items are "better" or "as good" - for one thing it gives you more flexibility in upgrading so that you aren't waiting on that one drop forever. Besides, nobody wants to go back to the days of "guys when is it ok to break the Earthfury set bonus?"

That time happened because T2 was poor compared to T1, even T2.5 was arguably worse.

The scaling of sets (in healing for example) is a reality now, and TX < TX+1.

Hehe - I'll reference you to this thread from just a couple weeks ago.
Shaman - Ten Storm - Set bonus

Wait, so is Inscribed Noble Topaz considered the best gem over Bold Living Ruby now?

I have a question.

With full raid buffs i have 2650 attack power, 39% crit and 155 hit.
One time i placed Rockbiter on my 1.5speed offhand Use Bloodlust, Drums of battle(the one that gives you haste) The abacus of the violent odds and i also go a windfury proc. During that 30 seconds, i did roughly 20% more dps than i would of done with the same buffs and windfury weapon on my offhand.

Was that only because my weapon speed is so fast that windfury does not hit for as hard as it could?

I did a search for a question like this but i found no answers. Thanks in advance.

The Living Ruby is only marginally better than the Topaz, so it is always worth considering when the chance comes along to meet a socket bonus.


Ralgarog: Yes, if you had a slow offhand with Windfury you would see a further dps gain.

The first post in this thread answers this - do not use an off hand faster than your main hand, and do not use rockbiter on the off hand.

Any thoughts on these two items.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32746 vs http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30863

The cuffs are socketed with 4 crit 4 str gem.

The cuffs are so much better at first glance, but the haste stacking really draws me towards the swiftstrike, i'm at 105 haste rating atm (10%) and hopefully i will be getting another haste ring soon, but i'm trying to convince myself to go farm the primal airs for the bracers when im not convinced there will be any benefit from 27 haste rating.

So stick to the cuffs or make the swiftstrike?

Unfortunately Lootzor does not do haste rating yet. But manually adding in the haste rating, giving it equal weight with STR, the lootzor result I get is
Deadly Cuffs = 17.3
Swiftstrike = 17.4

So they're virtually identical. Each is better than Precise Flight and worse than Insidious Bands (though not by much).

My question is not which weapon buff to use and which attack speed is the best.

My question is, "Is it possible for rockbiter to do more offhand damage with a .69 speed off hand than with a 2.6 speed windfury enchanted offhand."

One answer to that is "possibly," but a better answer is "you'll probably do more damage with a green L70 2.6 speed offhand than with your 1.5 speed arena weapon." Nobody enjoys telling you that your hard-earned gladiator weapon is worse than a L70 green, but it's the sad truth that results from the 3-sec WF shared cooldown.

Thank you.

does your guild already have needed amount of hearts of darkness for the sr gear? if not, then there's another thing to consider.

I finally ran enough EOTS to pick up http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28944

It seems like the easiest OH to get through solo play, which makes up the vast majority of my time in game these days. The main hand for me that goes with it is of course the Drakefist.

That's an interesting concern as I was looking at the Tier 5 gloves vs. the Fists of Mukoa. I believe hitting the 4 piece tier 5 set bonus and the added hit from the t5 gloves will push me over the top in that direction. I just don't know the benefits of haste over hit enough to entice me back across the line.

I recently upped my hit to around the 240 mark with a lot of added AP, and it really showed in my DPS output.

I think if you're not hurting on +hit, the swiftstrike look really nice, but the deadly cuffs also provide a lot of stam/crit/hit which can allow you more budget on other items.

Deadly Cuffs has 28 crit rating, Insidious Bands have 28 agility and as far as I know crit rating > agility (without counting dodge). That means Deadly Cuffs is better for dps purposes.

I'm really interested in the 2.7/2.7 - 2.7/2.8 question. Maybe 2.6 (rising tide)/2.8 is better than both?

I recently picked up the Syphon (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32262) as my OH and it really increased my total DPS. I'm using Dragonstrike as my MH atm, but plan on upgrading to Rising Tide axe as soon as I can. After seeing the power of the slower offhand, I am a believer.

With the proc rate this syphon has, and its non-uniqueness, i may pick up a 2nd one as a toy after the rogues have one for hemo. It procs a TON and i'm wielding it in my offhand atm.

The syphon is the only thing slower than the hammer BS line of weapons. I know that I for one will never see the inside of black temple. Is the difference between 2.7/2.6 that big of a difference between 2.6/2.6 or 2.6/2.5? In order to get those last two speeds you have to use somewhat sub-par weapons to the hammer line I would think.

Agility and crit rating are virtually identical, assuming kings. 1 AGI gives 97% of the benefit of 1 CR when buffed with Kings (22.1*1.1/25 = 0.97). Even weighting AGI at 0.97, Insidious Bands still win out, though it's a closer call: http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7...u1hedu.7heeu.5

True, kings is almost always on me and I didn't notice the different socket bonuses. Thanks for pointing that out.

We all have SR gear, just struggling to kill mother fu.....sharaz atm.

I'm sorry if this question was already stated:

I realize that the best set up is slow/slower for MH/OH weapons, but if you have the Blacksmithing 1handers they are 2.7, the only weapon in the game slower than 2.7 is the Syphon of Supremus.

So my question is, will 2.7/2.6 be gimp for DPS? the reason I ask is because right now I use T2 Blacksmithing (2.7) and HWL cleaver (2.6) and my future upgrades are T3 blacksmith for MH, and Arena offhand or Netherbane off of Al'ar, which would keep me at 2.7/2.6 speeds.

Furthermore, I am also asking if I should scrap the whole blacksmithing weapon and not even spend the DKP for the nether vortex's.

if my set up is bad, what do you suggest I do? I guess I could go for Arena (2.6) and Netherbane (2.6) and then at least they would be even.

My main concern is that I won't be entering Black Temple anytime in the near future, my guild has yet to down Vashj or Kael and I don't know what my goals should be for weapons atm.

Yeah but its also crashing if I have, well, anything locked :/

Posted by Stepp on the wow forums:


Considering the lack of diversity of weapons out there, you want 2.6/2.6 MH/OH

Snorkle from the Euro forums posted this as proof:


Don't really know what to make of this. If you were to MH a 2.6 weapon you would be taking something way inferior to dragonmaw unless it was an arena weapon. I guess the issue here is if you take something 2.6 speed, does the lower quality of item (but better speed) make up for the missed WF chances?

in that quote, snorkle says that using a 2.7/2.6 MH/OH will equal 5.12% less windfuries or a total of 1.02% lower proc chance.

So how much less DPS is that going to give me? and is it worth main handing an arena weapon, and offhand a HWL weapon (level 70 blue version) over T3 BS MH/Arena offhand (2.7/2.6).

My biggest concern is in the end will I have to farm out two arena weapons, because as it stands, I get obliterated in arenas. I was somewhat hoping after I bought my first arena weapon that I could then start working on armor so my team wouldn't have to play 4v5 rofl.

and like you said, does the lower quality weapon with better speed > better quality weapon with worse speed? And at what point do you say no? Should we all be walking around with Deathbringers in our offhand because its a 2.9 speed even though its an inferior weapon?

Using my mod. 2200/25%c/22%h/0haste. The usual disclaimers apply: this is just my best guess of the way combat mechanics work. Also note that I've ignored any stat differences between the weapons.

Black Planar Edge + Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver
A nonexistent weapon with the same DPS as Black Planar Edge, but 2.60 speed (ratioed down high end and low end damage by 2.6/2.7) + Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver
My initial take is that there's about a 1% dps penalty for wielding 2.7+2.6 instead of a same-dps 2.6+2.6.

More great data. Can anyone confirm in real-world testing?

You've got to love how much ammunition this long thread continues to provide against the windfury cooldown mechanic. It's just plain broken on so many levels.

Could we get a calculation on 2.7/2.8 and 2.6/2.8?

At this point, I'd prefer to answer questions on how to use my java sim so that people can run it for themselves, than to take run requests. There's a link in the OP and some instructions in the first lines of the file for folks who've never run java on their machine. It's not a finished product by any means, but I tried to make it easy to input and run your own data.

If I have 4 piece t5 bonus shall I change this part of the code
to this:
Am I right?

I get this error when I try to run your mod:
"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: ESCS"
I have the latest JRE. Anything I'm missing?

That looks like the correct haste fix.
The error you see is possibly due to not being in the correct directory, not having the right PATH setting, or not using the correct command lines.
Command lines should be:

> javac ESCS.java

> java ESCS


(You can replace the second step with "java ESCS > out.txt" if you wish to send it to a text file.)

Frankly, I'm pretty annoyed at the small speed discrepancies as well.

Due to bad luck in Kara and heroics I am still left with my Planar Edge, 60 HWL Cleaver combo (2.7 / 2.9) which performs well enough for my liking.

What annoys me is that, after dropping far to much gold than I wanted to to get my Blacksmithing to where it is now, My shiny axe is going to be potentially useless compared to a 2.6 / 2.6 set up ~_~.

Its enough to make me wonder if I should just leave it, spend my badges on a Bloodlust Brooch + something else and grind out S2 arena wpns or wait for Decap, Fools bane etc etc to drop.

Unless you're in Hyjal/BT, this discussion is really moot. You should be working on a Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver/Pummeler anyway... there's no better OH in game. Assuming you're using a Fool's Bane or better (e.g. T2 BS, Decap) MH and a blue 71.7 DPS OH, the Arena weapon will be put to better use in your OH. Then, you get to decide if you want an Arena weapon MH, or if you're close enough to a T3 or Hyjal/BT MH. That type of decision is just an opinion, not something someone else can answer for you.

Regarding +hit, I'm current at 238 with 228 Crit rating and 1352 attack power. Most if not all of my items are stuffed with +8 hit gems. My armory profile is on the left there, but should I -at this point- start filling up my gem slots with str gems? I was under the assumption I should be maintaining a balance between my crit rating and hit ratings...not sure if thats entirely accurate anymore. Our raid always has 3-5 paladins in it as well, so it's almost a gaurentee that I have Kings/Salv/Might on every raid.

I've heavily stacked haste with Dragonspine (not shown in profile due to whip), 2x Mongoose, Dragonstrike proc. The additional haste looks good, but in terms of maximizing my DPS should I change anything gem wise?

Here are a few WWS logs as well if that helps any:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=3pedu4w5uslzi
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=bnxrixlmhkiha

I'm not convinced having 2 same speed weapons would increase my DPS, given that almost 65% of my dmg now comes from white hits why would 5% more WF's increase my dmg vs the loss of my weapon haste proc.

10% haste from a weapon = 10% more white dmg? Or am i missing something here.

Snorkles numbers look right and i'm not gonna dispute that, but WF is not the be all and end all of shaman damage.

Try reading the first post of the thread.

Yeah, this should be right. Because it doesn't give much (if any) boost to overall WF dps, my sim runs last week said that the 10% haste should give you net ~6.6% DPS boost, as long as it doesn't drop your weapon speeds below 1.50.

Done.. Dropped all my hit gems for Str and CR gems. At .612 HR to CR ratio now (as opposed to my 1.2 ratio before), but I still have that maulgar's warhelm to replace anyway.

Another thing that I'm not entirely sure of is the exact amount of haste before it starts giving an adverse affect to dps. Right now I have flurry up almost constantly, plus 2x mongoose, Dragonspine and Dragonstrike proc. It's an enormous amount of haste and it's definitely dropping my weapon speeds below 1.5 when it's all procing at the same time (which is quite often)

When everything is procing at once I'm running at about 51% off the trinket/weapon proc. That's not figuring in mongoose procs and flurry. Not sure if I should eventually drop my dragonspine trophy or the brooch when a Tsunamii Talisman drops. Is haste god forever or does it eventually have a diminishing return?

I dont think there is much way to test when it really has an adverse affect, dropping below 1.5 speed means less WF's but at the same time it means more white damage.

It is difficult to measure at what point it is bad, really bad and then better.

Presumably hitting with both hands at 1.0 speed would be a net gain over both hands at 1.5speed? Given this is probably possible with all haste modifiers active.

I don't have an english operating system so I can't tell you the exact error message what I get after giving "javac ESCS.java" command. It's someting about "javac" command not being recognized as a valid command.

Before in the thread (I think it's page 4 or 5) there is a diagram with the different hastes and what happens at different %.

It's good up til (I think it was) 40%, then it acctually decreases your dps til you get up to 55% haste where it comes back again and the dps is good again.

For more/better info on it, check the post I referenced.

Edit; page 4, post #78.
(also corrected wording)

You need 2 things to do this. The JDK (Java Development Kit) in order to compile the class file. When you input the command "javac ESCS.java" you're telling the JDK to compile the code into a binary file. Then you need the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) in order to execute the java code, which is done by invoking the JRE through "java ESCS"

The direct link to that post is already in my OP on the first page.

actual tested haste data in the bottom of the flurry thread now:

[Melee Combat] How does Flurry Work?

weapon combos used:

2.6/2.6, 2.6/2.0, 2.6/1.4, 2.0/2.0, 2.0/1.4, and 1.4/1.4

see for yourself if same speed weapons make a big difference. It's post #69. Look at the line called "% extra attacks" for the relevant data for this discussion.

I can't get Java Simulator to work. I get the following error:

"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: escs/java"

Can anyone post results with 2.7/2.7 vs 2.7/2.8? thanks.

You must compile the java class first. Type "javac ESCS.java" and THEN type "java ESCS"
You can't skip the first step.

I couldn't compile either. I found out that "javac" application is not included in JRE (the one that file says you need to d/l) but it is on JDK (with dev tools).

I was comparing the new Vet boots with the weighted values and it seems one pair is worth 62 points and the other 64. I was aiming at 50% raid crit with 1900-2200 atk power between trinkets. I figured the massive amount of crits would outpace the seemingly small amount of damage gains from attack power, especially from WF damage. Especially when I gain so much attack from trinkets and buffs, I thought the crit itself during the 15-20 second trinket periods would be a really big boost. Is 28 attack power really worth .5 crit chance?

I also had some problems with getting the simulator to compile, it appeared to have something to do with the pathing, so that it can't find the "javac" command.

Manually adding the PATH to the system environment variables as described here solved it for me.

At last I made it work. See the silly results:

93 DPS 2.7 weapon does the same dps as 100 DPS 2.8 weapon when compared to a 2.7 mainhand.

(Using Talon as an example of OH, altough it is MH).

So, 0,1 seconds of difference between MH and OH makes an increase of 7 DPS in the weapon completely worthless.

According to theory at least. This all would require testing to verify.

A man after my own heart ;-)

No thoughts yet on the flurry testing linked near the bottom of page 10, anyone?

I could lie and tell you I understood your Flurry stuff Disquette but I wouldn't be very convincing.

I was comparing the new Vet boots with the weighted values and it seems one pair is worth 62 points and the other 64. I was aiming at 50% raid crit with 1900-2200 atk power between trinkets. I figured the massive amount of crits would outpace the seemingly small amount of damage gains from attack power, especially from WF damage. Especially when I gain so much attack from trinkets and buffs, I thought the crit itself during the 15-20 second trinket periods would be a really big boost. Is 28 attack power really worth .5 crit chance?

If any1 is interested in 3 sec WF cooldown showing addon - try out my ACE2 WF3sec v0.4, btw lucky shamans with 1st tier5 set bonus will be surprised :-)

I don't like surprises, what's the surprise?

The main thing it shows is that having 2 identical speed weapons doesn't show much (any) bonus over having weapons that are very different in speeds for the purposes of flurry uptime.

it just shows Invigorated cooldown in center of the screen when it's on
If you don't like the position try to edit core.lua

Of course it's only a theory. The java script does not model procs like mongoose, dragonspine trophy, nor the proc of the 2.8 mace what is actually an increase in dps (stealing life does damage, not just healing)
But I wouldn't say the script is not useful at all. I'll try out a lot of weapon combinations.

50% seems high, ofc no one would turn down having that much crit, but how can u get it even close to that without sacrificing all hit/ap ?

I'm somewhat curious, Disquette/Pater or anyone else, have we modeled the effect of hitting SS every 10 sec when its lit versus only hitting it when a WF CD is up?

Btw I ran your sim today Pater and it matched EXACTLY the DPS I put out on Mag tonight. Well done sir.

What is Mag's armor mitigation?

I see u tried my addon? :-)

Thank you for posting this excellent source of information Malan and thank you for those who drafted and contributed to the theorycraft. My eyes were opened on several matters and I know my raid performance will improve as a result.

Just wanted to put up some data from my testing I did today. I had the Syphon of the Nathrezim (2.8 speed 100dps) from BT and just received a Netherbane (2.6 speed 93dps) and after reading this thread started to wonder which would be better in my main hand, considering so many people saying that you should always put the slower weapon in your off hand to minimize wf procs. But in this case, there is a 7 dps difference in the 2 weapons as well as the speed difference.

So I took my fugly neon axe and went to the Blasted Lands and beat on those level 55 unkillable mobs. I did a run of .5 mill damage with the slower weapon in my main hand, then took the dps measurement from Violation (trying to keep both str and agi totems up at all times), then again but with the faster weapon as suggested in my main hand. Then repeated those 2 tests again to double check and average. I could have probably done it more to be more accurate, but I was already seeing a trend. In this case, it seemed the slower, higher dps, higher damage range weapon was best used in the main hand, rather than having the slow weapon in the off hand. I know it's probably not too accurate, but the difference was on average of the 2 tests, 34 dps difference in favor of the slow weapon in the main hand.

So to double check this, I used Pater's java simulator and put in my weapons and something along the lines of my gear (couldn't remember the exact in raid values, so I just guessed, none the less, no matter the values, it's close enough to illustrate the issue.) And this is what I got:

It's not the dps difference I saw in game on a level 55, but again, the slower weapon in the off hand did not win out. So this goes to show ya, do your own testing on your own circumstances before just throwing that slower weapon in your off hand. In this case, the dps difference out weighed the gain from the weapon speed difference.

I'd like to hear other people's responses and testing in this area, as well as any thoughts and ideas.

Well after running Pater's sim for a while it pretty much confirms what we postulated before in that Potency == Fiery for DPS.

Average over five runs Potency added 9.4 DPS (simulated by adding 40 AP)

Fiery averaged out to 9.52 DPS.

I simulated fiery by calculating proc chance (27% for a 2.7 speed weapon like Planar Edge)
then obtaining number of procs from total MH attacks

Fiery MH = 264552 Attacks @ 27% proc chance

[top] 71429 Fiery Attacks @ 48 avg dmg per for 3,428,592 dmg

9.52 DPS increase

Fiery average damage assumes
* +10% Coe
* +15% Imp Scorch
* +5% Misery
* 1.025 Crit modifier (5% for +50% dmg)
* 0.87 Resist rate modifier assuming Natures Guidance.

So Technically i would say that Potency is better as it doesn't rely on outside variables in order to perform. And of course either are stripped by Crusader or Mongoose.

Might want to add that War Stomp and heals reset both swing timers, even if it's an invigorated LHW.

Got a question that I can´t quite seem to find answer. While we all agree that haste is good for shamans, then question - how good is exactly stacking different haste - remains bit unclear.

Source of my hesitation is item budget values. As haste does not stacks on 1+1=2 principle, wouldn´t we be better off not stacking haste? Let me explain.

Let´s imagine that we have two identical dps output equipment for the same slot. One with HR, other with CR/AP or what ever. Now, when we pick up another HR item and stack it up with our current one (don´t forget flurry as well), then would HR stacking formula render our previously equal HR item inferior in dps output to AP/CR/HR item, that stacks on 1+1=2 bases? Since you get full benefit from AP/CR/HR but only partial from HR stacks. So when we weight and HR item, it must have way superior dps stats when compared with a single item?

That question is becoming more and more important to me every day, since we are raiding BT. Atm i could apply for http://www.thottbot.com/i32749, but I cant really figure out, is it worth the dkp or not. As well as should I use battle drums while bloodlusted or wait until bloodlust wears off, what gives more overall dps?

Sorry if I missed the link to this earlier in this thread but could somebody provide it for me please.

Magna, this is acknowledged in the "Itemizing Enhancement" thread. Having a slow main hand is important as well.

Malan, not to take away from Pater's sim at all, but about it matching your dps figures... This would assume you had 100% time on target for Mag, had 0 weapon procs, no Heroism, and never used earthshock/flameshock... And that Mag, after any curses, fairy fire, sunders, etc, happens to have exactly the armor reduction that you have in the sim.

If you really want to show something cool, do the blasted lands tests (armor value = 23% mitigation) and match it up to the sim when using nothing special, then add more variables as you go (storm strike, windfury).

Well the war stomp I understand since its a cast time, but do we have combat log confirmation of the Invigorated reset?

Its on the first post of the thread, down toward the bottom.

Oops forgot all about that.

Invigorated does reset swing timer, I can go out and get a log report if needed, but casting an invigorated lhw right before a mh swing is due results in me waiting ~2 sec (from when the lhw was cast) for the next mh swing.

As to the comment on stacking haste, the game simply adds the haste ratings together and then applies them, so it is indeed 1+1=2, were it to apply them sequentially (like it does with flurry/heroism over something hasted by rating) then it would actually give more dps not less.

What about the enhance shaman who take Nature's Swiftness, does using that reset the timer as well?

I had a 0/13/x build for a while and healing with NS definitely resets the swing timer.

AFAIK, this is the normal behaviour when a global cooldown is used.

How good would Darkmoon Card: crusade be when compared to other trinkets say the ones suggested in the first post?

Heya,

I was just curious into what meta gem would be the best choice for us atm.
the old +24 ap/crit rating one or one of the new haste increasing / agil+crit dmg increasing gems.

Parry doesn't cause an instant attack; it hastes your swing in progress. The wowwiki entry is current and correct, as far as I know. Instant spells for non shamans/paladins reset the swing timer, so if you attack at 3.0s, your next swing will occur 3.0s after you cast the spell.

Well, I just looked at the wowwiki parry entry, and am a bit miffed that someone completely obliterated the additions I'd made to it indicating the results I'd found doing my own parry tests and the 40% pro-rating.

This is a downside to a wiki. Any old schlub can destroy any evidence s/he wants to. I feel no need to repost the data and analysis now that I know what is likely to happen to it again.

EDIT: this particularly rankles me
/barf.

I am on the same line of thought.
While it may be a boost, I cant see why I would ever be arsed to do it.

I am a non-totem weaver, but I tried it for Gruul last time (well for a little bit) just to see if it was as annoying as I thought it would be.

There was visible benefit (roughly judging by ktm), between the time I tried weaving threat/wf and the time that I just ran WF. However, dancing around the cave ins, trying to keep shocks going, and shatters, I gave this up after I hit my first Shamanic Rage. My mana was getting eaten up faster (No more 5s ticks), and I just wasn't comfortable with the mana levels I was sustaining, the delay on shocks due to GCD and the chaining effect that had on SS (when using SS to try to proc WF after wfcd).

The fight just felt more chaotic to me. Part of that was just, obviously, not having a bunch of experience twisting totems. The threat benefit was there, but I really only saw the Arms warrior get a real win from that, because early on in the fight she had some spikes. Overall, it wasn't something that I really think is a great tactic.

I get nervous if I get below 50% mana - I like to have a big reserve to spam heals on myself for when I inevitably pull something I shouldn't be pulling, and I am prone to throw heals at people to help out when I can.

I only use tranquil air on very threat sensitive fights. I find I'm not really ever threat capped except when I'm using shamanistic rage, bugged judgment of light (320 healing procs), and heroism at the same time, in which case my treat sometimes spikes on omen up above 1300 tps; a number that I'm obviously not capable of generating with damage alone.

I did use TA on void reaver last night with a great deal of success, I was able to go all out the entire fight and came close pulling aggro at the very end. We have our melee dps stay in the entire fight instead of stepping out to avoid poundings. My dps warrior did unfortunately die to aggro with less than a minute left in the fight.

EDIT: Took the question to a more appropriate thread.

I am sorry but since i made addon for collecting cooldowns i newer got it to proc faster then 50 seconds, and i raid a lot...

Well that's the official WoWHead.com data for it and it agrees with all of the other major data mining sites.

What is everyone's experience with Shrouding Potions? After pulling aggro on VR a couple weeks back one of the guild alchemists sent me a couple stacks and told me to stop dying. Using them for a week on Teron and such where I have a problem with coming close to the threat cap seemed to make a difference, but I didn't have any hard numbers on it. The single best time I've found to use them is in the first 20 or so seconds of a fight so you start at very low threat with a slightly higher ceiling to deal with WF's unpredictability.

As for my latest experiences, I was forced to twist TA/WF during the last 20% of our latest anetheron to bloodlust my group. I was pretty much capped, while my rogues and warriors were safely behind. Managed to keep DPSing through it coming very close to pulling aggro, and I probably would've without twisting it. I would never consider it for a long term solution, I felt really pressured by the GCD and watching Omen, enough so that it wouldn't be worth the marginal gains.

I posted these 2 macros in the totem thread, I use them all the time instead of shocking, as I'm there to make the whole group's dps better, not just my own.

MACRO 14 "G/WF" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
/castsequence reset=9/combat Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem, stopmacro;
END
MACRO 15 "TA/WF" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
/castsequence reset=9/combat Windfury Totem, Tranquil Air Totem, stopmacro;
END

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=28548

-800 Threat, sadly it has a 2 minutes cooldown. Seems not worthy like all the trinkets excluding [Prism of Inner Calm] (if/when it's working as intended).

I wonder if anyone can help me with the following:
I usually time my Shamanistic Rage in combination with Lust for Battle (278 ap from Bloodlus brooch trinket) and Blood Fury (orc racial, 282 ap). Now Id like to get these three actions into a single macro but failed in typing the proper macro for it so far.
Anyone here can give the right Macro for that?

Note: The order of actions = Blood Fury -> Bloodlust Brooch -> Shamanistic Rage
Bloodlust Brooch is equipped in my first trinketslot.

Thnx!

the macro is

/stopcasting
/cast blood fury
/stopcasting
/use bloodlust brooch
/stopcasting
/cast shamanistic rage


you can use this same thing to insta trinket/em/ns/cl just use /stopcasting and use or cast whatever you want in order

Blood Fury starts gcd isnt it? this macro wont work.


i'd write something like this

/castsequence reset=15 blood fury, bloodlust brooch, shamanistic rage

mash 3 times

note: this will not work if something on cd...

another version will be

/use bloodlust brooch
/castrandom blood fury, shamanistic rage

again you need to mash it

No, the macro he gave DOES work, as trinkets afaik dont start the gbc
So /cast Blood Fury
/use Bloodlust Brooch
/cast Shamanistic Rage

Thnx for the help!

Does anyone have a good addon or suggestion how to notice that "Invigorated" has procced (instant heal, T5 2-set bonus). With all the raidbuffs beeing on (~15 total) its bit hard to notice, but really useful to top yourself or someone esle off without loosing more than a glc.

I believe you can customize Scrolling Combat Text to show specific gains always as for example message or critical, making it easier to spot. The readme shows alot of information about this and how to do it.

If you use SCT, find sct_event_config.lua and writhe in this line:
You need to enable custom events ingame:
/sct menu
find Animation/Misc. Options

Meh. My raid leader is now encouraging me to pull aggro and die so that I can just a get a threat wipe.

I find they key to low threat generation is well timed shamanistic rage and totem weaving with it, also dropping traq at the start of the fight for 1-2 mins also helps.

I've had decent results with just ragging on our tanks till their TPS improves.

While my raid leader doesn't encourage me to pull aggro and die, often times, on fights like VR its the only thing that can be done. Have to love the Shaman's Feign Death.

Also, up until now I haven't played around with totem weaving, I think I am going to mess around with the Windfury / Tranquil Air mix a bit and see if that helps out at all. Honestly I think the mana could be better spent some where else, but lower DPS is better the no DPS I suppose.

I used to have great problems with aggro as well of course, but I have to say, that after our recent nerf, our tanks are way ahead of me threat-wise. So if any of you is experiencing this kind of problem now, i'd suggest providing your tanks with link to some basic tanking mechanics forum (or some equip - I didn't believe Stigmata he has no threat problems at all on Maghteridon for example, but after our tanks got few items, its the same for me).

Of course things get nasty on Void Reaver for example, but Big5 combo (BoS, TA, Subtlety enchant, Fetish of the Sand Reaver and Prism of Inner Calm) still works like a charm and I can go full damage.

Theres no need to pull agro as an enhancement shaman fighting Void Reaver simply becouse that encounter isnt about enhancement shamans (or any meleeclass for that matter) maximising their dps - its about a raid surviving while doing a certain amount of stable, reasonable dps.
Threat rly isnt an issue any longer imo, except for a few fights (for example gruul, morogrim, magtheridon) where its there for a reason, namely preventing the fight from becoming even more easymode than it already is.
So for any encounter where you hit a threat-cap: just slow down your dps, its ok, its working as intended and theres no need for more of your dps to win the battle. The majority of current encounters however, does not suffer from any of these threat-issues - sadly enough they have other ways of capping our dps output to a level that is fitting for our role as support-dps.

I think out of our current killable bosses, Void Reaver is the only one I have any real difficulty with threat. While I can stay alive through 75% of the fight, the last 25% or so I usually start capping out and its harder for the tanks to push past me, not impossible, just harder. Usually at the 25% mark I either remove the Windfury enchants from my weapons or die.

As for fights like Morogrim and Magtheridon, I never have problems with threat, ever. I can push my dps to its max and don't have problems. Of course at the moment my weapons are a bit on the fast side, but even once I have the slower weapons I don't think it will be a problem. We have some pretty amazing tanks.

One thing I had completely forgot about, is the Subtlety enchant to cloak, going to have to get that.

I've glared through this whole thread, but I couldnt find any post(Maybe I'm just too tired for this at the moment) about 4p Gladiator gear(Mostly s2)?

(4) Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Stormstrike ability by 1 sec.

Wouldnt this result in 10% more total SS damage done? Would this be worth considering for a raiding shaman to use?

Anyone that's in a better shape to try to calculate how much DPS this would end up as (Keeping in mind that this would result in raid nature damage getting a bit more boost aswell.)

Off the top of my head I'd say you'd risk losing more DPS than you'd gain since there's a lot of itemization points spent on Resilience, and the 2pc bonus is providing little to no benefit in a raid.

I'd figured as much about the 2p bonus, I guess it's really a matter of where you are in gear progression, (T6 would not be worth switching out, but maybe Karazhan epics?)

ok, I've read this thread and read some of the player feedback and I just want to confirm what I did was the best choice.

I used to have 1446 AP, 212 HR and 24.45% Crit.

Since then I have changed my gems around to reflect 1472 AP, 188 Hit and 25.99 Crit.


Was this the right choices? (basically changed the +8hit gems to the +4crit/+4str gems) or did I make a mistake at understanding priority stats?

Yes it was the right choice. I actually made the same change recently, I was sitting about 3 hit rating below the Hit Cap (25.6% I believe - with talents of course). Recently changed hit gems for 4crt/4str gems or 8 str gems.

I've had a few people on my server ask me about a certain Hit level they should be aiming for, generally tell them there isn't one but 170-180 is a nice number. Right around the 19-20% hit range. I can't say for sure this is the correct area, a lot of the enhancement shamans here raid with much less and are further progressed then I am, its just what I aim for and like.

You can use Power Auras to display an image on any part of the screen while the buff is active

Removed.

its been said wf on warrior/combat rogues are much much more beneficial than wrath of air. If you guys have a enhance sham, put them in the melee group if not i suggest you stay with melee for str and wf but switch out to another group just to drop mana tide.

Hi, i have browsed the 15 pages of this thread that i was linked and i am finding it Very informative. Thanks for all the hard work you fellas have done with this theory crafting and i am hoping it will help me more in the future.

Although before reading this thread i think i have made some bad choices in the way of gear.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...issan&n=Tilley

If some one could take a browse over that and tell me where i should improve although i am pretty sure i know where, for example. 1.5 offhand is a bad idea and i will work for the 2.6 speed offhand. I replaced some gems with +8 str over +16 ap but kept some of the major ones like +20 AP because by my calculations it was better then +8 str. I have done this with a few gem slots, Also my trinkets need replacing but i think they are the main issues.

Any advice would be much appreciated and any item recommendations that are easily obtainable would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Have you tried my addon?

Your talent tree is a mess. You didn't pick up Unleashed Rage which means you are now a DW DPS shaman that offers little to a group over a resto shaman except that you still can't heal worth a damn because you don't have the deep Resto talents. You need to at a minimum pick up Unleashed Rage. I'd recommend dropping 2H Weapons and Healing Way and probably NS to make up the points you need for that. I can't even fathom raiding without Shamanistic Rage so I'm not sure how you're getting along without it.

Why is the Violet Eye badge the best trinket that you have for that slot? You didn't pick up the Bladefist trinket at least from Hellfire Peninsula?

+150 Health to Chest is a Tank enchant. You need to use +6 Stats instead.

Your weapon enchants are horrid - I'm hoping those are only because you're working on the mats for some real enchants.

Adding to the above I'd look at switching up your offhand to a slow 2.6 speed weapon. You're in around the same boat as me right now having a nice high offhand DPS wep that's too fast. Slow down that offhand so you can stop eating your WF procs. It looks like you do a bit of PVP so I recommend picking up an arena one-hand wep. You'll probably do much closer to rogue DPS with just that.

I've only been enhance for 2 weeks now and my DPS is sorely lacking because of the wep in particular. It's really painful to see WF proc for around 2.5k-3k damage on main hand and a weak 1k-1.5k on offhand. And to see it many times over because of the speed is just that much worse.

Another thing is try gemming up your hit rating. AP is important only if you're actually connecting with your target. Pick up that hit rating to at least 150 through gems if you can and add some AP/crit after you hit that cap. It helped me a LOT.

During Karazhan raid's i seem to be in the top 3 of the DPS at all times against opponents that out gear me by a mile. I am currently testing some DPS theory's in blasted lands on some mobs and i am hoping to pick up the PvP 1 hander before the Arena 1 hander to confirm these theory's.

And a reply to the above post, I was informed by several raiders that its mandatory to have 8,000 health unbuffed which was my goal. Also the weapon enchants were for free i was helping someone level up while i get my mongoose. My talent tree is such a mess becouse im still required to heal in gruuls where as i DPS in Karazhan so its kind of a mix and match situation at the moment.

You need to read a bit more of the testing presented in this thread regarding this.

I have read that +8 STR Is the most beneficial gem so when i could i tried adding that to my Armour.

Running a test on some mobs in the outland using a DPS meter addon i discovered i did over a 70 second fight.

Gladiator's Left Ripper
Binds when picked up
Off Hand Fist Weapon
95 - 178 Damage Speed 1.50
(91.0 damage per second)
+21 Stamina
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 9.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 15.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 10.
Equip: Increases attack power by 28.

I sustained 919 DPS over the fight.

and with

Colossal War Axe of Power
Binds when equipped
One-Hand Axe
94 - 176 Damage Speed 2.60
(51.9 damage per second)
+38 Attack Power
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 63

I sustained 929 DPS.

All the variables used were the same each fight finishing in exactly 70 seconds.

Disappointing that i wasted my arena points on this weapon before i considered the mechanics of a shaman.

Also i do not have any solid math on the situation however, I noticed that i did roughly 20-40 more DPS on each fight by using stormstrike whenever the Windfury cool down was up instead of just button mashing it.

Just a thought, I would have a discussion with your Raid Leader and officers about your roll in raids. If they are so short on healers that they need to make an Enhancement shaman heal they need to do something about it.

I personally will carry my healing gear around and if they are wiping on something because we are short just a little extra healing I will help out, but I do nothing more then throw an occasional small heal at someone if I see them low most of the time. Using that Hybrid spec, you suck as both a support healer and the support dps roll your suppose to fall into as an Enhancement.

You may be able to put out some great numbers for your own DPS, but not taking Unleashed Rage is just silly, not to mention Shamanistic Rage. Both those talents are pure gold for us, the first one being pure gold for the melee classes in your group.

As for the gems, Inscribed Noble Topaz is decent as well.

Edit: And your an Orc, get some Axes!

After looking over all this, there is some really great information here. What I am curious to see is some different ideas from people as to the "perfect" pve gear set up from all available gear. Rank maybe your top 2 items in each slot.

Talking all the way threw BT and HS. I'm sure people have a lot of different ideas and everyone says that you need x amount of hit, crit, ap. But how about compiling it all in a full set, make the gear work to actually achieve those perfect stats. Personally why my goals are is 1900ap, 29%crit and between 180-220 hit. ATM I'm sacrificing hit for strength and crit (also waiting on a decent offhand. Will most likely pick up the MerGlad mace on tuesday).

Not really. I have around 7k unbuffed and have no trouble, and there are shaman with less than that who raid just fine. Now as I understand it there are some fights in Black Temple that require everyone in the raid to have 9k health minimum, but looking at your gear right now you don't need to be so worried about that.

Your guild is doing no good by having you split your talents so badly between Resto and Enhance. You'd be better off going full Resto if you aren't picking up Unleashed Rage.

I'm sure the best weapon to use in main hand and offhand is Syphon of the Nathrezim. There was an "Enhancement shaman lootzor" link somewhere to see the best 5 items in each slot.

Thanks for all the great advice i guess its one of those. I am enhancement or i am not raiding situations.. I will begin warming the bench

Here's the top 10 items in each slot.
http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7...u1hedu.7heeu.5

I'm amazed of how many people reply to this post without reading the OP, almost all the info is right there.

Never said I didn't read this entire post and I've seen lootzor. Thats a pretty easy answer for what I asked. I for one am not going to punch in some numbers into a program and blindly take what it says. Sure that program may help a bit, but really take a look at some of that gear.

.. we have .. what's wrong with it?

I don't think lootzor has any hidden agenda, it just scores items based on the stat values you give it. If there's something lacking in the gear that scores well, you need to look at what you were asking for and adjust your criteria accordingly.

But you'll ask us and blindly take what we say? I'm not sure what the difference is, especially since a lot of guys will simply say "here's the lootzor values I use".

No, I know what I want. I'm just curious what everyone else's top Items are. I don't see why this is causing an argument/discussion or confusion what I'm asking. Was hoping to start some sort of discussion as to x-item vs x-item and people's reasons for liking one thing over another. We aren't supposed to have all the exact same gear.

Yes, if you don't have BoK: 1 Str = 2 AP and they're perfectly interchangeable.

Still wondering about this, also, was my offhand a good choise till netherbane (no i dont wan't/can't get gladiator axe)

To those that keep asking, "what's a good hit rating to be at?", "what's a good crit rating to be at?" etc. I ran some simulations using the java sim posted in the op using a batch file to check for trends at the extremes. Basically, I ran it going from 9%hit to 25% hit at various attack power levels (one at my unbuffed attack power, one at my raid buffed attack power, and one at an absurdly high attack power just for giggles.) I did the same with crit, from 1% to 50%. Of course, I would add or subtract equivalent "pater" attack power per his formula, so that the total point values were always equal.

Here is what I found, at unbuffed attack power, from 9% to 20% hit, it was fairly flat, but after that, from 20% to 25%, I saw a steady drop in dps, for a total of 6dps drop. But then at raid buffed attack power, it was flat all the way across. But then as you add attack power, more the more %hit you have, the more gain in dps you get as you go up, which makes sense, since if you have more attack power, the more you hit, the more you multiply the damage. But you would need an unobtainable attack power level to see a noticeable difference in dps. But the point is, it doesn't matter how much %hit you have, as long as you replace it with equivalent attack power or crit in a raiding situation. You could have 9% with a lot of attack power, or 25% with less attack power, it doesn't matter. The end result is the same.

As for the crit sim, there was a noticeable curve, but I'd say it's fairly flat where it counts. At lower attack power levels, the optimum point to be is lower than at higher attack power levels. Once you go past that optimum point, you actually start to loose dps, but again, I'm not talking huge amounts here. Unbuffed, the optimum point seemed to be at 20% and when you dropped below about 12% is when you really saw a noticeable drop in dps (most likely due to not being able to keep UR and flurry up any respectable amount) Then when raid buffed, that "optimum" point moved up to about 25% with starting to see a sharp drop off below 17% and at the top end around 35%. And of course the higher attack power you start with, the more crit you need to be at the "optimum" point to where if you had 5k attack power, you would see a steady increase in dps all the way to 50% crit.

In general, what does this mean to you? Well, just stick to the formula with the gear available. You'll wind up with plenty of +hit, +crit, and attack power to up your dps. Any noticeable upgrades as per that formula is going to net you a gain, even if it drops you to seemingly low crit or hit levels or even high crit or hit levels but lower attack power. In general there is no real perfect place to be, just as long as the total number of points go up and you don't go to absurd extremes with crit.

Personally, I like to see about 20% hit, 25-30% crit, and as much attack power as I can get. I hate seeing when I pop SR a few misses knowing those could have been 450 mana procs, but at the same time, there is no need to hit the cap either. As for crit, I like to see that it never goes down and flurry is up as much as possible. I don't like to see my character swinging without flurry, that's just painful to watch. Also, if you have items like the hourglass, which procs off crits, you want your crit rating as high as possible to get the most out of that proc. So yes, there is more to it than the sims, but in general, stick to the formula, and you most likely can't go wrong.

It has been said that 8 str is the best gem to go for, but I haven't seen the +20 AP gem being taken into consideration.... Wouldn't that gem be better?

[Bold Ornate Ruby]
Bought with almost 7k honor. So thats like 1 day of AV.

Yes but it is unique-equipped.

I've read here that at some point, too much sustained haste lowers dps for us. I'm wondering what point that is? Getting ready to go weaponsmith and was gonna make drakefist, but the rogues in my guild have told me i'm probably next for the dragonspine trophy off gruul. would those 2, with mongoose and flurry be too much haste? and would it be considered sustained? if so, then should i go axesmith and make the planar axe thing.

thanks for any advice.

Regarding Nightfall, if I remember correctly it procs less post-70. There was some discussion on it a while ago where over the course of a whole Gruul fight people were able to get it to proc maybe once.

Nightfall was my introduction to enhancement, the guild made me the Nightfall bitch on C'Thun and it was awesome.

Also, memories.

Guys, most of the information that everyone is asking for is on the first post of this thread. I'm keeping it updated for a reason. Not to mention that a lot of people are asking the same questions that were answered 1-2 pages back.

And even if your question is not explicitly answered in the first post, a lot of information can be reasonably inferred from that post if you stop for a moment and think about it.

__________________

To be fair, little mention of how Haste rating affects our DPS is made in the OP. I remember there being a statistical valley between 45-55% haste, but not for which weapon speeds. A good rule to follow is to try to not get your MH/OH under 1.5, since then you'll cut down on WF procs.

Oh no! In the event that they're all active, yes, you'll be under the 1.5 windfury cap with your main hand (approximately 1.35 speed at that point). What's worse, is that if they're all proc'd, and you're also using Bloodlust, you'll be just under the 1.0 speed cap too - Three wasted MH attacks! (about .96 speed)

Enough "the sky is falling." The real question is do you want to plan your gear choices around combat that makes up approximately 90% * 33% * 33% ~ 10% of your time? Or gear choices for the other 90%?

(note assumptions - 90% = flurry uptime, 33% = dragonmaw haste uptime, 33% = dragonspine up time. The mongoose procs don't make any difference for this set up when it comes to falling under or over the 1.5speed barrier.)

I sense a falling sky.

__________________
----- sig ---------------
Discoepfeand - rogue / Disquette - shaman
A stormstrike / shocks /watershield timer-bar addon: http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/9729/
"Moogle has mentioned this in passing a few times but never elaborated on it. Perhaps we can entice him to respond." - Malan

Au contraire. From the OP -

__________________

Perfect, I was looking for its own entry, and completely glanced over it having read it so many times looking for stat comparisons, etc.

Yah I'm still trying to make certain areas stand out a bit more. I figured having emphasis on certain things like "USE A SLOW OFF HAND" and "DROP WINDFURY FOR WARRIORS" was more important though.

__________________

i had checked the first page yesterdy but didn't see anything more than "too much haste lowers dps", but i did not check it before my post, so my apologies on that. my question wasn't as dire as you make it seem with "the sky is falling". it's a good bit of time/money going one path of the weaponsmith, so if 2 sources of haste proc would be ineffecient, the dps increase with the axe's ap/crit would be of greater benefit than a redundant haste proc. but you did answer my question in that everything proc'ing at the same time would be too much but would be a minimum amount of time, so thank you. was an honest question in trying to direct my focus in the optimum direction.

i'll be sure to check the first page before posting again.

From most of the armory profiles I've seen of enhancement shaman, they usually use bloodlust brooch and the hourglass. So while dragonmaw/abacus/flurry/mongoose might put you in a situation where you have too much haste, you'll probably replace the abacus with the brooch.

But then again, you might replace that with a DS trophy... =) Personally, I'll be going dragonmaw anyway even with the chance that excessive haste lowers my dps slightly. I just think it would be fun to be attacking that fast!

To clarify, that post was not directed at Calem specifically and its not meant to be nasty. We've just had a LOT of people asking questions that are on the first page of the thread or even just 1-2 pages back.

__________________

Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless are better for pure DPS than T4, but the helm and shoulders are the two strongest pieces of T4, so I would take those for your 2-piece set bonus and replace the gloves/legs/chest with something else. (Chest, off Magtheridon, comes in 3rd and is fairly decent, but the leather chest off Nightbane is equivalent and the Ranger-General's Chestguard off Hydross and the Bloodsea Brigand's Vest off Karadthress are superior.) Basically, the answer to your question about gear depends on what's available to you.

As for offhand, what you're using is good, in fact absolutely the best you have access to, but you are really unnecessarily gimping yourself by refusing to go for the Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver/Pummeler. Get a 2v2 or 5v5 group and lose 10 games a week, you'll still get enough points to get that axe or mace before you can get anything better in the OH.

I have the +3 melee dmg meta gem in my T4. How does that equate in terms of AEPs? The Maulgar's War Helm has a higher AEP because I dont use the +24 ap one.

First off, apologies for cross-posting. I posted this in the "Modeling Darkmoon Card: Wrath" thread, but I think this thread might actually be more fitting (and it seems like the cool hangout for Shaman theory). I've read through this whole thread, great info here, but I haven't seen anything on this trinket. Here are my questions:

I am an enhancement shaman and I am strongly considering getting this card (Darkmoon Card: Wrath). It looks like for most classes with decent crit ratings, this card is underwhelming, but I see the following benefits for endgame pvp scenarios and enhancement shamans specifically:

- A good crit trinket for endgame PVP, where many opponents will have 400+ resiliance and can lower your normally high crit rating by 10% or so. Of course, the lower your crit rate, the more benefit from this card.

- Enhancement Shamans cast shocks intermittently, which have a low (~5%) crit rating. Shocks will usually not crit and will thus inflate your crit rate more than just attacking with your "real" melee crit rate.

- The fact that Shamans do use physical attacks, shocks, and occasional heals gives us a greater benefit from the card, as we benefit from both the melee and the spell crit. This will result in a small but legitimate increase in damage from shocks and increase in healing from crit heals.

- As mentioned before, classes that get significant bonuses from critting will get a better benefit from this card. When I crit, my attack speed increases by 30% and my attack power increases by 10%. This card will help keep flurry and unleashed rage up.

- Last but not least, windfury attacks occur instantaneously, and therefore when windfury procs, both attacks will benefit from any +crit charged up from the card. In this sense, the +crit charges are applied to 2 attacks and even if the first windfury proc crits, the second simultaneous proc will still receive the benefit. I have no math or in depth knowledge of the game's programming to verify this completely, but it seems to make sense.

- Stormstrike is also 2 instant attacks, and theoretically could also be a similar case of both attacks benefiting from +crit charges from the card even if the first one crits.


I respect this site and it's inhabitants very much and would love some feedback on the above points. Could the PVP-oriented enhancement Shaman be the perfect fit for this card, due to resiliance, shocks, healing, and windfury/stormstrike mechanics?

Malan I notice that Wrath is not mentioned in the OP either. Has anyone ran some numbers for this trinket, including regular shocks (at low crit rate) and both Stormstrike/Windfury attacks getting benefit from the +crit charges even if the first one crits?

Yah sorry trinket and gem stuff is rather lax right now since I'm only putting up stuff once there's some sort of a model for it, and I'm not mathematically inclined myself.

__________________

So is the +24 AP meta gem the way to go? The relentless one seems pretty nice considering the secondary benefit also contributes to dps.

I think you should go for relentless earthstorm diamond, 3% increased crit damage and 12 agility.

How does the relentless equate in AEP value for Pawn/lootzor? 12 AGI is about 24AP but it doesn't take into consideration the increased crit dmg.

I think that a good section to elaborate on in the original post would be the discussion held a few pages back (Around 13? I think) on the 2.6/2.7 mainhand + slower 2.8 offhands, (Or perhaps in the extreme case, a 2.9 speed level 60 GM/HWL weapon.)

Since the two major smithing weapons are 2.7, and the initial post emphasizes the primacy of 2.6/2.6 or bust, I'd just foresee many redundant "Well, what about using a slightly faster/slower OH with my 2.7 smithing mainhand etc etc?"